Page 62 - Manual of Roman Everyday Writing Volume 2: Writing Equipment

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Lead and other metal tablets

Thin sheets of soft metal were inscribed with styli and used for
a variety of texts, mostly of a non-official nature, when a more
durable support was needed. The sheets could easily be cut to any
desired size and shape, folded or rolled for transport, storage or
deposition and pierced for display or attaching.

Lead is the metal most commonly used for handwriting (Božič and
Feugère 2004, 25–29). Most notably it was used for curse tablets
(defixiones), not only in Roman times but already in classical Greece.
Such tablets were used, for example, to demand justice following
a theft or to curse professional opponents or rivals in love. Curse
tablets are usually rectangular or square and of varying size, with
lengths mostly around 10 cm but ranging anywhere from 3–4 cm
up to nearly 30 cm. The texts often invoke deities of the underworld
and can contain spells and magical phrases now incomprehensible.

Fig. 39: Roman lead tag from Kempten (Germany) reading Scitos
Biraci / sag(um) (denarios) VII (‘Kept for(?) Scitos, son of Biracus,
soldier’s cloak, 7 Denarii’). Archäologische Sammlung der Stadt
Kempten, inv. 1953, 98. © Archäologischer Park Cambodunum.

The tablets are usually found in places suitable for a message to
the relevant deities such as sanctuaries, graves or bodies of water.
Dozens of such tablets were found in the temple of Sulis Minerva in
Bath and the sanctuary of Mercury in Uley in the UK (Tomlin 1988,
1993), another important find spot for Roman curse tablets is the Isis
and Magna Mater temple in Mainz (Germany, see Blänsdorf 2012).

A more mundane use of metal as a support for handwriting are tags
that were used to label a variety of objects as personal property
or to record amounts and contents (Frei–Stolba 2011). Lead tags
Fig. 38: Roman curse tablet from Bath (UK). RIB 154, The are usually small and of rectangular shape (c. 1–2 x 2–4 cm) and
Roman Baths, Bath, accession no. batrm 1983.14.b.1. © have a hole on one end for attachment. They are often inscribed on
Roman Baths, Bath & North East Somerset Council. both sides and were sometimes reused, resulting in superimposed