Athenian Curse Practice

Abstract Drawing upon recent discoveries from secure archaeological contexts, this chapter provides a historical overview of Athenian curse practice from the late fifth through early third centuries bce. It explores why Attic curse production emerged and intensified when it did, and surveys the language and themes invoked by Attic curse-writers, in addition to the contexts in which curse assemblages were deposited. A rich data set of over 500 curse tablets and a dozen curse effigies allows one to observe the scale and variability of the practice, and how it changed over time in a single polis between the Classical period and Late Antiquity.