06 Gordon (35-62):Layout 1 31-07-2012 9:01 Pagina 35
Richard Gordon
FIXING THE RACE: MANAGING RISKS
Abstract:
Although they are routinely listed as a standard type of defixio,
curses against charioteers are in fact relatively uncommon, oc-
curing only at a few sites, but there sometimes in relatively large
numbers. There is no type-text among the known magical papyri.
Although many charioteer-curses are purely formulaic, putting
their rhetorical energy into apostrophe, a number, especially at
Carthage and Hadrumetum in Africa Proconsularis, show detailed
interest in the unfolding of the race, which can be correlated with
the concerns both of literary accounts of races and of iconographic
representations. The recent shift away from thinking of curses just
as evidence for ‘malign magic’ towards seeing them as attempts
to limit perceived risks is of considerable value in assessing these
texts. Who is attempting to minimize their risks here: individual
charioteers, gamblers/punters, or the owners of factions and/or
stables? Discussion of Jerome, Vita Hilarionis §11,5 Morales = §20
Migne (391-2 CE) in this connection.
Key words: defixiones – circus games – circus iconography – char-
ioteers – Roman spectacles – risk minimization – Jerome, Vita Hi-
larionis*
Curses against charioteers, charioteer-teams and their horses, “de-
fixiones agonisticae”, have been a routine item in generic lists of
defixiones since Auguste Audollent’s Defixionum tabellae of
1904 1. This is in a sense not surprising, since the first recognized
examples of the genre were found in the late nineteenth century
in Tunisia, at Carthage, mainly by Adolphe-Louis Delattre (1850-
1932), and at Hadrumetum (Sousse), by an assortment of French
*
This paper was written in the context of the research project NIF Q501800/G
supported by the Ministry of Education and Science, Madrid.
1
DT, p. lxxxix; KAGAROW 1929, pp. 50-55; PREISENDANZ 1972, pp. 9-10. LAM-
BERT 2004, p. 78 points out that the magical papyri contain a wider range of texts
than this. For later lists, identical except for the addition of texts against thieves
and alleged slander, see GRAF 1996, p. 110, OGDEN 1999, p. 31.
2
Carthage: DELATTRE 1888a, b. Hadrumetum: DT, p. 360; GORDON 2005, pp. 65 s.
3
DT nos. 234-36, 238, 243-45, 272-75, 288-89, 295; AE 1905: 170; SEG 9: 837-
40. He also revised the circus-texts published earlier by Delattre and Cagnat. On
some of the problems with his work, see briefly KROPP 2008, p. 31.
4 7
E.g. FARAONE 1991, pp. 12 s.; GAGER 1990; GAGER 1992, pp. 42-49; CLERC 1995,
pp. 164-66; GRAF 1996, pp. 110 with n.14, 141-43; OGDEN 1999, pp. 32 s.
5 8
Formally, I take ‘magic’ in this context as an umbrella-term for a body of mate-
rial that can in principle be enumerated; and substantively, as a sub-category of
IN THE NORTH AFRICAN CIRCUS
To the memory of Simon Price
(1954-2011)
officers who were amateurs of archaeology 2. Several of these texts
were deciphered and published by Audollent himself 3. General
discussions of such texts typically devote a few sentences or pages
to ‘competitive curses’ as a whole, pointing out that the largest
single group is directed against charioteers; that most, even at
Rome or Carthage, are written in Greek; and that the circus was
a highly significant socio-political institution, particularly in the
Late Empire 4.
None of these considerations is wrong, but none seems to offer
much insight into the specific nature of our information about
such magical attacks 5. To my mind, the very category ‘agonistic
defixiones’ is in many ways unhelpful, since, by grouping chari-
oteer-curses with curses against actors, athletes, venatores and
gladiators, it suggests that it is the common ground between them
that ought to be important for the historian rather than their dis-
similarities or specific features. Moreover, by focusing on the cat-
egory of curse-tablets it distracts attention from the relation be-
tween the wider social institutions involved, which individually
need close examination, and the specific character of our evidence
for particular types of cursing. A brilliant though all to brief at-
tempt of this kind was made by Peter Brown in the early days of
the revival of historians’ interest in symbolic practices, though it
is hard to see how his account relates to circus-defixiones 6. But
he was right about the general aim, which in the case of the cir-
cus must be to construct models of the relationship between char-
ioteer-curses and the relevant social institutions which can then
be tested against the surviving evidence 7.
In other words, the problem needs to be more effectively his-
toricized rather than seen off with the diagnosis ‘competition’, or
even ‘mediation’ 8. The recent volume by Jan Tremel, which com-
bines a detailed discussion of the material with the reprinted epi-
instrumental religious praxis. My usage overlaps only very partially with ancient
usage, itself extremely diverse and non-specific; I see little point in attempting to
write Begriffsgeschichte in this area, especially of the kind that focuses on indi-
vidual words such as mavgoı/magus. On some advantages of retaining the tradi-
tional term, see HOFFMAN 2002.
6
«The charioteer himself was an undefined mediator in urban society: he was both
the client of local aristocracies and the leader of organized groups of lower-class
fans – and so, at times, a potential figurehead in urban rioting»: BROWN 1970, p.
25 = pp. 128 s. (repr.) (some indirect criticism in CAMERON 1976, pp. 155 s., 271-
96); also GAGER 1992, p. 224; TRZCIONKA 2007, pp. 38-52.
On the need for models rather than ‘telling the story’, see VEYNE 1974 (‘histoire
conceptualisante’); FINLEY 1985, pp. 47-87; JORDANOVA 2000, pp. 91-113.
A different sort of error is made by PUVIS D’ESCURAC 1987, who evidently views
all circus-defixiones as part of an unbroken tradition – without bothering ask why
06 Gordon (35-62):Layout 1 31-07-2012 9:01 Pagina 36
36
graphic texts, provides a useful starting-point 9. The present arti-
cle does not claim to offer more than a prolegomenon to such an
effort at modelling. At the same time, one of the major practical
difficulties in studying these circus-texts is the mass of details they
contain, which, in the absence of detailed contextual knowledge,
is more or less meaningless to us. Another aim is therefore to try
and compensate for this to some extent by presenting at least some
of the material in tabular form.
The following discussion is divided into three main sections, pref-
aced by a brief account of the market-orientation of the Graeco-
Egyptian magical tradition and its appearance in Africa Procon-
sularis during the latter part of IIp. The first main section takes
up the issue of the late appearance and odd distribution of char-
ioteering-curses by comparison with the intense institutionaliza-
tion of chariot-racing in the Hellenistic and especially the Roman
periods. All the surviving texts of this class are in the ‘Graeco-
Egyptian mode’, that is, they were created directly or indirectly
by professional practitioners working in the tradition of Graeco-
Egyptian magic 10; ‘amateur’ curses of the type one finds, say, in
judicial or amatory contexts simply do not exist here. Yet there
is no evidence that it was practitioners in Egypt itself who creat-
ed the genre: the magical papyri contain no such texts. It is a rea-
sonable hypothesis that the earliest surviving charioteer-texts,
those from Carthage and Hadrumetum, which reveal a much
greater variety of types and models than later efforts, are also
among the earliest to have been written, and are one result of the
search by practitioners in the Graeco-Egyptian tradition for new
markets for their products, triggered by their encounter with Ro-
man-type circus-organisations which did not exist in Egypt.
The second section distinguishes broadly between the late-antique
circus-defixiones, those from Rome, Beirut, Damascus, Apamea
and Antioch, and those from Carthage and Hadrumetum, which
are all from the High Empire. The first are heavily routinized: their
imaginative focus is upon the theologico-rhetorical apparatus that
the practitioner is in a position to deploy, including drawings,
rather than upon the intended aim, the interference with the race,
which figures, with a couple of notable exceptions, only in a few
verbal synonyms for “come to grief”. The second group, by con-
trast, reveals a detailed interest in the task of imagining the un-
doing of the target team(s). My interest lies in the relation between
their narratives of prospective disaster and the scenarios of the
circus developed in surviving literary sources, from Vergil’s Geor-
gics, say, to Sidonius Apollinaris. A second type of comparison
can be made with the highly conventionalized images of circus-
races, which survive in numerous media, but particularly in Erotes-
scenes on children’s sarcophagi. The argument is that these ear-
lier narrative scenarios in the defixiones highlight stereotyped or
conventionalized moments of the race drawn from other media
(rather than ‘direct experience’) so as to be able to draw upon the
authority inherent in received knowledge.
The third section seeks to shift the analysis away from ‘competi-
they only begin when and where they are first evidenced, or whether there are
differences between the eastern and western Mediterranean. The article does how-
ever make some useful points.
9 12
TREMEL 2004. Although he takes over the category ‘defixiones agonisticae’, curs-
es relating to athletics and venatores take up little space in his discussion (6pp. in
all). His concern being exclusively with sport, he of course ignores curses against
actors, which are anyway uncommon.
RICHARD GORDON
tion’, whether between charioteers or aristocratic factions, towards
the issue of risk-minimization recently proposed by Esther Eidi-
now 11. Most commentators, when they even consider the issue of
agency or interest here, suggest that such defixiones were com-
missioned by charioteers themselves or by supporters of one or
other faction. Some of the texts from Carthage and Hadrumetum
are no doubt best explained in these terms. But certain features
of the texts, particularly the detailed knowledge of teams, drivers
and names of horses, and the odd distribution of references to
the team-colours, suggest other interests at work. We need to take
more account of the history of the circus as an institution and of
local contexts. It seems likely that in Carthage and Hadrumetum
an important role was played by the private owners of factions
and/or racing stables, who evidently had insider information
about the details of their competitors’ teams. On this hypothesis,
at least some of the groups of texts that use the same model of
cursing-technique would be due to an arrangement between fac-
tion- or stable-owners and a specific practitioner. At Rome, how-
ever, to say nothing of the larger cities of the eastern Empire, the
circus was organized differently; the absence of written defixiones
until the late-antique period may be connected with these local
differences in organization. The major stimulus however must have
come from the increased intensity with which the practice of mag-
ic was officially condemned and persecuted in the Christian em-
pire, which had the inevitable effect of rendering its practice more
interesting and indeed effective.
TEXTS IN THE GRAECO-EGYPTIAN TRADITION
One of the major deficits of Audollent’s presentation of the de-
fixiones known prior to 1903 was his failure to group the ‘self-au-
thored’ curses separately from texts based on a professional ma-
trix, and, among the latter, to distinguish texts in the Graeco-Ro-
man tradition from Graeco-Egyptian ones. The speciously rational
topographic organization concealed all such differences in style
and aim. Hardly less misleading was Preisendanz’ decision to name
his collection of Graeco-Egyptian texts on papyrus ‘Papyri Grae-
cae Magicae’, where graecae was fatefully ambiguous between lan-
guage and cultural context. Recent work has shown that the con-
ceptual, or theologo-pragmatic world of the formularies has its
basis in developments in the Late-Egyptian temple in the after-
math of the Macedonian seizure of power, more particularly in
the Roman period, and the associated ‘cultural urbanization’ 12.
Although the process cannot be closely documented, there took
place in this period a massive adaptation of the type of magical
service supplied by the temples from the major themes of the Late
Period, which might include execration and divination but main-
ly focused on defence: protection against attacks by crocodiles,
snakes and scorpions; medical assistance, such as haemorrhage or
head-ache; assistance in child-birth; protection against epidemics 13,
10
Most of those who write on magical practice in the circus seem to have little or
no inkling of this distinction.
11
See also the contribution by EIDINOW to this volume, p. 000.
FRANKFURTER 1998, pp. 198-237.
13
BORGHOUTS 1978 provides a limited selection; also BORGHOUTS 1980; 2002;
QUACK 2002; RAVEN 2010.
06 Gordon (35-62):Layout 1 31-07-2012 9:01 Pagina 37
FIXING THE RACE: MANAGING RISKS IN THE NORTH AFRICAN CIRCUS
to a largely different set of themes, some of them actually present
in older narratives about celebrated magicians: numerous types of
divination, especially ‘direct’ visions of god and bowl-divination,
with or without a medium, procuring a spirit-helper, malign mag-
ic (causing death), unlocking doors, sending dreams bad and
good, phylacteries against daemonic attack, recipes for making one
handsome and successful, for separating couples, for a range of
amatory purposes, in other words, services aimed at a quite dif-
ferent clientèle, evidently urban, which had no interest in snake-
bites and attacks by hippopotamuses 14. Recipes for medical pur-
poses, such as fever, contraception and eye disorders, occur almost
exclusively in the more recent, fragmentary finds from rubbish-
dumps 15. This clientèle must largely have been the Greek-speak-
ing residents of the 40-50 metropoleis and other towns scattered
up the valley of the Nile 16.
A decisive feature of these texts is that, even though they were
devised by personnel within the tradition of the Egyptian temple,
and were not intended to be seen by clients, they are written in
Greek 17. At the same time, many of the technical methods used,
such as purification by natron, the use of ‘eye-paint’, certain div-
ination techniques, the mode of the historiola (ad hoc mythic nar-
rative), as well as a conception of the power of words, and of the
dead, are those of traditional Egyptian magic. There can thus be
no doubt that this is all the work of Egyptian temple personnel
responding to a new cultural and political situation, and of course
the new markets opened up by the emergence of a new élite and
its attendant sub-élites 18. They were also happy to adapt and can-
nibalize elements of Greek religious (and magical) texts and to
absorb a limited number of nomina magica from other sacred tra-
ditions, notably ancient Judaism. Associated with this shift is the
abandonment of the traditional amuletic forms, especially the
scarab-amulet, and the adaptation of the Greek intaglio (semi-pre-
cious stones used as signet-rings) to amuletic ends, again bearing
Greek texts, with a range of self-consciously exotic Graeco-Egypt-
ian iconographic schemes 19.
At the same time, with the sequestration of their estates, the eco-
nomic basis of the Egyptian temples gradually deteriorated 20.
Moreover the priesthood itself was subjected to a ‘policy of sub-
ordination and marginalisation’ 21, inducing priests to supplement
14
PREISENDANZ 1956; a complete index in BRASHEAR 1995, pp. 3495-506.
15
BRASHEAR 1995, pp. 3499-501; SCIBILIA 2000.
16
TACOMA 2006, pp. 29-35.
17
DIELEMAN 2005 argues that the Leyden- London Demotic magical papyrus (Leid.
J. 383 + P. Lond. 10070) was translated back into Demotic (some elements are
written in Hieratic, alphabetic Demotic and Old Coptic) c. 200 CE, which can
only have taken place within a temple context, since at that period only temple
priests could read and write Demotic. This itself implies not merely awareness of
the language-issue but disagreements, even conflicts, within the priesthood about
the process of adapting Egyptian sacred texts to a new market.
18
RITNER 1993; 1995. One of the very earliest surviving texts, dated to the Augus-
tan period, and with none of the generic devices of later texts, claims to have been
translated into Greek from a holy book of Hermes (i.e. Toth) written in hieroglyphs
and kept in the adyton of the temple in Heliopolis (SupplMag no. 72 ll.1-5).
19
MICHEL 2004; ZWIERLEIN-DIEHL 2007, pp. 210-31. The Graeco-Egyptian mag-
ical amulets are conventionally dated II-IIIp.
20
KÁKOSY 1995, p. 2904. FRANKFURTER 1998, pp. 37-82 argues that rural temples
often managed to maintain their role in local contexts into the Coptic period.
21
DIELEMAN 2005, pp. 208-11, citation on p. 208. An important moment in this
process occurred under the Tetrarchy, with Galerius’ destruction of Coptos in
293/4 CE and Diocletian’s suppression of the revolts in Egypt in 297/8; the trans-
formation of the temple of Amun at Luxor/Thebes into an imperial audience hall,
with a military camp to the west, is a well-known example (KALAVREZOU-MAX-
EINER 1975).
37
their incomes by offering free-lance magical services 22. Since this
enterprise owed its existence to sacred texts, it continued to draw
its authority from the written word: Graeco-Egyptian magical
practice was pre-eminently, though by no means entirely, scrip-
tual 23. Collections of such recipes (formularies) were assembled
from different sources by individual practitioners, of which the
most famous is the Great Paris magical codex (PGM IV), written
in a fourth-century hand; many of the individual recipes howev-
er are in one form or another considerably older – the Coptic sec-
tions for example can be dated on linguistic grounds to c. 200
CE 24. Such collections were ‘living texts’, constantly added to by
different owners and editors. None of the typical features of this
type of Graeco-Egyptian magic, notably nomina magica (esoteric
divine names), logoi (nominally fixed collocations of such names),
palindromes (which can only be constructed in an alphabetic writ-
ing-system), charakteres (non-standard signs), and calligrams (nom-
ina assembled in specific geometric shapes), are found much be-
fore the second century CE 25. Considerable numbers of frag-
mentary formularies on papyrus have been found in rubbish
dumps; ‘activated’ papyrus texts (i.e. texts directed at a named
target) turn up in occasional deposits such as tombs 26.
One feature of this type of magic is that almost none of the hun-
dreds of individual recipes known from formularies have turned
up in ‘activated’ texts. Part of the reason is that the longest, best
preserved and most important formularies were mainly acquired
by Giovanni d’Anastasi before 1830, and were claimed by him to
have been found in a tomb at Luxor in Upper Egypt; the great
majority of later finds are from the Fayûm 27. Since the major mod-
els and matrices belonged to individual temples and were then
adapted, often dramatically, by practitioners working outside
them, they probably had very restricted circulations, except in-
sofar as they were communicated by letter between acquaintanc-
es. Very few texts or excerpts from texts known from surviving
formularies have been found as ‘activated’ texts inside Egypt 28.
On the other hand such texts did travel outside Egypt: there are
even one or two cases in which adaptations of material in sur-
viving Egyptian formularies have turned up at Rome, such as
PGM LVIII ~ DT no. 188, where the lead text seems to be ear-
lier; the basic scheme of a drawing on a late-Roman defixio from
22
SMITH 1978; 20004.
23
BETZ 1990.
24
BRASHEAR 1995, p. 3419.
25
On these characteristics, see BRASHEAR 1995, pp. 3429-43. Only a handful of
surviving texts on papyrus can be dated as early as IIp. Following Preisendanz,
BRASHEAR 1995, p. 3414 claims that PLouvre 3378 = PGM XVI is to be dated to
Ip; JORDAN 1988b however convincingly dates it to II-IIIp. With two limited ex-
ceptions (SupplMag 67 and 73), none of the handful of texts dated earlier than IIp
by DANIEL-MALTOMINI 1990-1992 shows any of these characteristic devices, e.g.
SupplMag 52, 71, 72. The earliest known charaktêres seem to those on a gold phy-
lactery found in a tomb in the dép. Haute-Vienne (KOTANSKY 1994 no. 10, dat-
ed ?I/IIp) and an activated amatory text (T.Genav. inv. 269) dated by the original
editor III-IVp, but by DANIEL-MALTOMINI 1990-1992 to IIp (SupplMag no. 38).
This may be correct, though as usual they do not divulge their dating criteria –
Aussage gegen Aussage.
26
PREISENDANZ 1950; BRASHEAR 1992.
27
BRASHEAR 1995, pp. 3401-3404. Following JOHNSON 1977, pp. 88, 93, 131f.,
DIELEMAN 2005, pp. 40 s. argues that the orthography and grammar can be linked
to the dialect of Thebes (Coptic dialect P).
28
BRASHEAR 1995, pp. 3416-18, discusses the exceptions, almost all of which re-
late to PGM IV 296-434; even so, this version is more complete than any surviv-
ing “activated” version, three of which show very great divergences from the no-
tional model.
06 Gordon (35-62):Layout 1 31-07-2012 9:01 Pagina 38
38
the Fountain of Anna Perenna at Rome is related to that in a Cop-
tic formulary of Xp in the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Ley-
den 29. The circulation of one type of such Graeco-Egyptian texts,
phylacteries on precious or semi-precious metals, mainly found
in the eastern Mediterranean with a scattering in the Latin-
speaking provinces, provides a loose index of the reach of the
genre 30. The discovery of groups of malign texts in this same tra-
dition, especially at Athens and Corinth, at Amathous in Cyprus,
and at Rome, but also at Caesarea Maritima in Palestine, Anti-
och, Carnuntum, and Trier, to say nothing of scattered individ-
ual finds in Italy, is a further index 31. All imply the existence on
a limited scale of formularies that could be adapted; at least the
larger, more competent groups are likely to have been the work
of individual practitioners trained in Egypt 32.
The defixiones from Carthage and Hadrumetum in fact consti-
tute, with those from the Athenian Agora (which are still partly
unpublished), the largest groups of Graeco-Egyptian ‘activated’
texts yet known. Contacts between Egypt and Carthage were long-
standing: the coastal trade-route linked Alexandria with Carthage,
and passed through Hadrumetum; both cities, more especially
Carthage, possessed important shipping-harbours 33. Though pop-
ulation estimates are unreliable, ranging from 60,000-300,000 in-
habitants, by the late-Antonine/ Severan period Roman Carthage,
the capital of Africa Proconsularis, was one of the largest cities
in the Empire, indeed the largest in the western Mediterranean
after Rome 34. Hadrumetum, the main point of export for the enor-
mous oliveyards in the hinterland, was likewise a wealthy city
which achieved the rank of colonia already under Trajan 35. Both
were thus obvious places for Graeco-Egyptian magical practi-
tioners, who were already familiar with the idea of selling their
products in a market, to set up shop. Their technical language
was of course Greek; but they needed to adapt their wares to the
interests, opportunities and anxieties of a Roman city.
Given the present state of documentation and the lack of mod-
ern editions of the texts, with drawings of the various hands, and
29
DT: the parallel was pointed out by Preisendanz ad loc.; Anna Perenna: BLÄNS-
DORF 2010, pp. 221-227 no. 7 with fig. 3; compare RAVEN 2010, p. 172 fig. 139;
the Coptic text was published with extensive commentary by GREEN 1988. The
bird-figures on the lead containers found in the cistern are also clearly related to
Coptic models only attested much later, e.g. the ‘bird-demon’ Somis in P.Heid.
inv. Kopt. 680, Xp [unknown origin), cf. JÖRDENS 2011, p. 33 no. 8.
30
KOTANSKY 1994. Their distribution is potentially misleading because such items
could easily be transported great distances from their point of manufacture.
31
See the materials collected by JORDAN 1985 and 2000.
32
ROBERT 1981, pp. 9 s. = 2007, pp. 361 s., notes the parallelism between DT 241
ll.24-25 and the text of DELATTE - DERCHAIN 1964, p. 316 no. 460 = MICHEL 2004,
p. 289 Cat. 28.2 (cornelian, reference to Jewish belief). To my mind, it is out of
the question that texts in the Graeco-Egyptian tradition should have been easily
available for sale, on the market as it were.
33
For the coastal road, see now LÖHBERG 2006, vol. I pp. 92, 96-98; 348; vol. II:
map nos. 33.2 and following. Close contacts between Egypt and Carthage go back
to the Hellenistic period: LECLANT 1995; cf. a specific titulature for Serapis brought
to Carthage by Alexandrian traders: RIVES 1995, pp. 213-34; also BRAEMER 1990,
p. 180 on granite columns imported from Aswan; pp. 189 s. on sculptural tech-
niques borrowed from Egypt.
34
Already a colonia from 45 BCE (Strabo 17.3.15, 833C end). The entire pertica
Carthaginiensis enjoyed tax-free status.
35
CIL VI 1687 = ILS 6111; the official name was colonia Concordia Ulpia Traiana
Augusta Frugifera Hadrumentina. Olive-oil export: BRIAND-PONSART and HUGO-
NIOT 2005, p. 190. According to PFLAUM 1960-1961, I, p. 83; cf. vol. II pp. 379-
385 no. 158 (M. Claudius Restitutus, ILS 1437), the procuratorship for the ad-
ministration of the imperial estates of the regio Hadrumetina was probably creat-
ed at the same time, apparently in union with Theveste; by the joint reign of M.
Aurelius and L. Verus it was an autonomous post (e.g. AE 1905: 128 = CIL VIII
RICHARD GORDON
more or less reliable estimates of date, it is impossible to write a
due account of this process of penetration into a new market. We
can merely adduce the following considerations.
(1) Alongside the texts in the Graeco-Egyptian tradition at
Carthage, there is a sizeable group of judiciary or related curses
in Latin, many of them found in the same adjoining necropoleis
as were used by the Graeco-Egyptian practitioners. These texts
are of an entirely traditional sort, written directly by or for the
principal and employing lists of names and/or simple devices of
insistence. One for example reads: «… facias il(l)os mut{t}os ad-
versu(m) Atlosam; ac ligo o(b)ligo linguas illoro(m) medias extremas
novissimas ne quit possint respondere contra …» 36. As far as can
be established, only two are addressed to named deities, domina
[Te?]rra and domini dei 37. There is also a malign curse of the same
provenance addressed to the Keeper of the Underworld de-
manding the death of one Iulia Faustilla, daughter of Marius 38.
Only two of these ‘self-written’ curses show any awareness of
Graeco-Egyptian techniques, and then of the simplest kind, name-
ly enclosing the curse in a frame of Greek letters spelling out what
might be construed as primitive voces magicae 39. Their very exis-
tence indicates however an awareness of the presence of Graeco-
Egyptian practitioners and acknowledgement of their more ad-
vanced cursing techniques. At Hadrumetum, by contrast, just one
‘self-written’ Latin curse, for an unknown purpose, was found in
the Kairouan necropoleis 40; all the others are to a greater or small-
er degree influenced by Graeco-Egyptian practice – some rather
sketchily 41.
(2) I incline to suppose that in both cities these necropoleis were
used by the Graeco-Egyptian practitioners because they were al-
ready known among the resident population as a suitable site for
defixiones 42. There were evidently two areas where the Graeco-
Egyptian practitioners claimed to offer a more effective service,
on their arrival in Carthage and Hadrumetum in the (later) IIp-
early IIIp, namely the the forcible erotic text and the malign curse
to death. The more effective service consisted in appeal to Egypt
23068 = ILS 9012 = PFLAUM 1960-1961, II, pp. 416-19 no. 170); for more re-
cent discussion see CHRISTOL 2005, p.130 n.117. The wealthy villas to the north
of the harbour were mainly built in IIp: FOUCHER 1964, p. 161.
36
DT no. 219 ll. 2-8 = KROPP 2008 no. 11.1.1/5, either from Bir el-Djebbana or
from Bir ez-Zitoun. ‘Atlosa’ can hardly be the correct reading. The judiciary texts
are grouped as DT nos. 215-26.
37
Domina [Te?]rra: DT no. 220 = KROPP 2008 no. 11.1.1/6 (according to Audol-
lent dedicated by a named person, ‘Obsecra’ d. of ‘Sperata’, but it seems likely to
me that the reading is false – the only known name of this type is Obsequens/Ob-
secuens. Moreover the obvious interpretation of obsecr… is as a verb. Kropp does
not address these issues). Domini dei: AE 1933: 234 = KROPP 2008 no. 11.1.1/35:
«…obligate, perobligate Falernaru(m) balineu(m) ab hac die ne quis homo illoc ac-
cedat» (cf. AE 1933: 235).
38
DT no. 228a = KROPP 2008 no. 11.1.1/14: «Te rogo qui infernales partes tenes,
commendo tibi Iulia(m) Faustilla(m), Marii filia(m), ut eam celerius abducas et ibi
in numerum tu(um) (h)a[b]ias»; listed by MARCO SIMÓN 2009, p. 168.
39
DT nos. 218 = KROPP 2008 no. 11.1.1/4 (judiciary); 227 = CIL VIII 12507 =
KROPP 2008 no. 11.1.1/13 (amatory; Schmidt’s drawing in CIL gives a better im-
pression of the appearance than Audollent’s). Both were found in Bir el-Djebbana
or Bir ez-Zitoun.
40
DT no. 263 = KROPP 2008 no. 11.2.1/1.
41
If this knowledge were derived from Graeco-Egyptian formularies available to
private individuals, one would expect these efforts to be more competent than
this. I take it therefore that they rely on hearsay.
42
The same applies to the Fontaine des mille amphores, inside the walls, where
two related ‘self-written’ curses against a bath-owner were found, as well as three
charioteer-texts. For this reason, I would not use the argument about provenience
to support the idea of specialist knowledge as RIVES 1995, p. 199 does, though
there is certainly something in the “difficult and dangerous business” thesis.
06 Gordon (35-62):Layout 1 31-07-2012 9:01 Pagina 39
FIXING THE RACE: MANAGING RISKS IN THE NORTH AFRICAN CIRCUS
as a source of magical authority, knowledge of voces magicae, and
concern for the design and lay-out of the inscribed text. Of the
two surviving amatory texts of this type known from Carthage,
one begins by demonstratively proclaiming the Egyptian source
of its authority, appealing to a series of daimones with Greek names
written in Greek characters: Kataxin≥ ≥ , [q]ui es Aegypto magnus
daemon …Trabax ≥ian≥, omnipotens daemon …Nocq≥irif qui cogens
daemon (es) …, ending with Rik≥ouriq agilissime daemon in Ae-
gypto, and is clearly based on a Graeco-Egyptian model 43. The
sole malign text so far recovered is written in Latin, and focuses
on a drawing of a deity or daimon in a tunic, with a patera in his
right hand, and apparently a torch or staff in his left; the invoca-
tion, part of which reads [ia]m iam [ci]to cito facias ex (h)oc die
ex (h)[a]c (h)ora, iam iam, cito cito, facias, i.e. a finale translated
from Greek, is written in columns on either side of this figure 44.
From Hadrumetum an interesting series of malign texts was
found in the Roman necropolis north of the ‘Eiffel Tower’, all in
Greek, which display a keen interest in overall lay-out and de-
sign 45. The amatory texts by contrast vary markedly in their fa-
miliarity with Graeco-Egyptian techniques 46.
At some point, however, the encounter with these two Roman
cities and their circuses induced these practitioners to offer a new
kind of instrumental service, the defixio agonistica, which turned
out to be rather successful – 90% of the 93 texts in the Graeco-
Egyptian tradition found at Carthage are probably or certainly of
this type, and twenty-four of thirty-seven (65%) at Hadrumetum 47.
All the finds of this type at Hadrumetum relate to the circus. At
Carthage, a deposit of fifty-five items was found in a room in the
amphitheatre, probably to be identified with the spoliarium (where
the dead and dying gladiators were deposited) – all of the few that
could be opened and read relate to venatores 48. Some twenty-eight
charioteer-texts have been found in various locations 49. It must
however be emphasized that we can have no notion of the total
43
DT no. 230 a = KROPP 2008 no. 11.1.1/16. There are five demonic names in all.
The fragmentary text on the reverse (b) is written partly left to right, partly in-
verted, and partly from bottom to top; Audollent suggested that a start was made
by one inexpert hand and the rest written by a more experienced person, who al-
so wrote text a. The other amatory text, DT 231 = KROPP 2008 no. 11.1.1/17,
is written in Latin in Greek characters, invokes nine voces magicae, and employs
the expression «atiuro vos per (h)unc prepositum super necessitates terr(a)e ..». (ll.
20-22).
44
DT no. 229 = KROPP 2008 no. 11.1.1/15. Audollent thought this text was am-
atory; Kropp lists it as judiciary (reading ABLIVONI in l. 5 as o]bliv<i>oni); I take
it as malign on account of occid[as] in l. 1. SEG 9 (1933) no. 841, which carries a
drawing of a daemon with a snake-head and neck inscribed with two voces, may
also be a very simple malign text.
45
AUDOLLENT 1908 (three in Greek); another, unrelated tablet, found by Sgt. Icard,
also in Greek: HÉRON DE VILLEFOSSE 1905 (drawing on p.292). DT no. 298, from
the Kairouan road necropoleis, with a drawing of a daimon with snake-head and
neck, may well also be malign.
46
Some are in Latin written in Greek characters, with voces magicae, e.g. DT nos.
267-68 = KROPP 2008 no. 11.2.1/4-5 (versions of the same Latin text, one in Greek
characters; the latter has quite accomplished voces; 267 was found wrapped with
three charioteer-texts, DT nos. 272-74 = TREMEL 2004, pp. 114-16 nos. 22-24, so
evidently the work of the same practitioner); DT no. 271 (not in KROPP 2008) is
a sophisticated Greek text with very few voces; DT no. 296 (frag.) again in Greek,
is apparently prefaced by a sequence of voces. Frags. A i-ii of DT no. 269 = KROPP
2008 no. 11.2.1/7, seem to consist entirely of voces magicae; the text in B is again
Latin in Greek letters, with (at least) three voces (Alimbeu, Colombeu, Petalim-
beu) found on another amatory text, DT no. 265 = KROPP 2008 no. 11.2.1/3, writ-
ten entirely in Latin but invoking a (neky)daimon: «et tu quicumque es demon, te
oro …». The target here (a woman named Victoria) turns up in another text, DT
no. 264 = KROPP 2008 no. 11.2.1/2, with Greek voces, charaktêres, and elaborate
design. From all this it is clear that these practitioners were versatile in their choice
39
number of tablets ever deposited in these cities or of their sur-
vival/discovery rate; nor can we assume that those that have been
discovered, can be successfully unrolled, and read, are a random
sample of all those ever deposited. It is however not unreason-
able to guess that the original deposits amounted to several hun-
dred items, of which only a fraction survives 50. At all events, of
that fraction, a large proportion is ‘agonistic’; which suggests that
the Graeco-Egyptian practitioners managed, through their claims
to superior technique and knowledge of the other world, to cre-
ate a sizeable demand for this particular type of service and main-
tain it over several years, if not decades.
CHARIOTEER-DEFIXIONES
The charioteer-defixiones from Carthage and Hadrumetum are
the earliest datable of all those known from the Mediterranean
area (see Table 1) 51. So far, just eight cities have yielded 79 read-
able texts of this type; all known examples outside Africa Pro-
la nota
consularis, mainly from the large cities of the eastern Mediter-
53 è
ranean, date from 300 CE or later 52.
allʼin-
It would be wrong to infer too much from mere silence, but these
terno
numbers and this distribution are in striking contrast to the pop-
ularity of chariot-racing throughout antiquity 53. Evidently no one
della
in Classical and Hellenistic Athens, or anywhere else where char-
Table 1
iot-racing formed part of the programme of games, dreamed of
Quindi
using curses to influence the outcome of such races – even dur-
la 54 è
ing the heyday of judicial curses in the fourth and third centuries
diven-
BCE, a period that also saw the invention of two other types of
written curse, those relating to the protection of craft-shops and
tata 53
to inter-personal relations (“love-magic”). The same point can be
e vice-
made about Rome, where chariot-racing, already well-known in
versa
Etruria, became institutionalized from the mid-fourth century
per la
of design, style and language.The French officers found no judiciary texts in the 53
Kairouan road necropoleis.
47
«Tituli praeterea …karthaginiensium, hadrumetinorum agitatorum multi, crebro
una reperti, inter se ita similes adparent ut non concipi potuissent exigique nisi ab
uno aut a consociatis pluribus hominibus eisdemque reconditiore disciplina imbutis»:
DT, p. xlv.
48
Delattre found these rolled-up texts with a variety of other items in 1887 (DT,
p. 334), but only a handful could be opened and read: see also TREMEL 2004, pp.
28 s. Table 1.
49
Seventeen are listed by TREMEL 2004, pp. 150-80, nos. 51-68; he includes only
two of the items from the amphitheatre, most of which cannot be unrolled or are
blank: PINTOZZI - NORMAN 1992, p. 12.
50
Audollent speaks of numerous indecipherable fragments in the Musée Lav-
igerie/National Museum at Carthage (DT, pp. 286; 359 after no. 262) and un-
openable texts at Sousse (ibid. p. 361, now presumably in the Bardo Museum);
G. Németh has found a good many others in the Audollent archive at Clermont-
Ferrand. We shall never know how many fragments were ignored or thrown aside
by the French officers at Hadrumetum.
51
The dates, especially those from DT, are, so far as I know, not based on corre-
lations with the other material excavated in the tombs and are guesses. Except in
the case of those from the circus at Carthage, therefore, I have ignored them in
constructing the tables later on. For what it is worth, however, JORDAN 1976, p.
128, agrees that most of the (Greek) texts from Carthage are correctly dated II-
IIIp. The Latin examples are roughly contemporary.
52
TREMEL 2004, pp. 38-40; LEE-STECHUM 2006. The greater part of the examples
from Rome itself, the group known as the Porta S. Sebastiano texts (no. 17 in
Table 1), are in Greek and are clearly indebted to Graeco-Egyptian formularies
(e.g. Osiris mummy), cf. MASTROCINQUE 2005.
53
On the early history of chariot-racing, see OLIVOVÁ 1989; in the Mycenaean pe-
riod: KILIAN 1980.
06 Gordon (35-62):Layout 1 31-07-2012 9:01 Pagina 40

40 RICHARD GORDON

SITE/TREMEL NOS. ROUGH DATE SITE/TREMEL NOS. PROVENIENCE

1 Carthage no. 60 I-IIIp
1 Hadrumetum, nos. 21-49 Tombs in necropoleis
2 Carthage nos. 46-49 IIp 2 Hadrumetum, no.50 Belongs to same series as nos. 36-41
3 Hadrumetum nos. 22-35 IIp 3 Carthage, nos. 51-63 Tombs in necropoleis (38 in all)
4 Carthage nos. 51-59 II—IIIp [4 Carthage, no. 64 Room in amphitheatre] 58
5 Carthage nos. 63-66 II—IIIp 5 Carthage, nos. 65-66 Fontaine aux mille amphores (La Malga)
6 Hadrumetum no. 45 II—IIIp 6 Carthage, nos. 67-68 13 found in circus, only 3 published
7 Carthage no. 50 IIIp 7 Rome, no. 89 In a buried funerary urn nr. Quirinal
8 Carthage no. 61-62 IIIp 8 Beirut no. 19 Near circus of Herod Agrippa
9 Carthage nos. 67-68 mid- IIIp 9 Damascus, no. 20 Unknown
10 Hadrumetum no. 21 IIIp 10 Lepcis Magna, no. 69 Starting-gate of circus
11 Hadrumetum nos. 36-44 IIIp 11 Rome, nos.90 Columbarium in grounds of Villa Doria
12 Rome no. 89 c.300 CE Pamphilj
13 Beirut no. 19 Early IVp or later 12 Rome, nos.70-88 Tomb by Porta S. Sebastiano, not far
14 Damascus no. 20 IVp from Circus of Maxentius
15 Lepcis Magna no.69 IVp 13 Apamea, nos. 17-18 In an earthen wall by a drain
16 Rome no. 90 IVp or later (?displaced)
17 Rome nos. 70-88 390-420 CE 14 Antioch, nos. 11-16 In the euripus and at the meta of the
circus, cf. JORDAN 2000, 27 nos.102-07
18 Apamea nos. 17-18 late V or early VIp
19 Antioch nos. 11-1654 late V or early VIp Table 2. Proveniences of groups of charioteer-defixiones from known sites (based
on TREMEL 2004, pp. 28 s. Table 1).
Table 1. Rough dates of groups of defixiones from known provenances (based on
TREMEL 2004, p. 39 Table 3).

(Ludi Romani from 366 BCE, possibly earlier) 55. One reason for
this may be the continuing predominance of ephemeral or tem-
porary circuits, even in Italy, where only seven permanent circuits
have been found archaeologically (four of them in Rome; all but
the one in Bovillae are imperial constructions); the existence of
twenty-six others can be inferred from indirect evidence 56. Even
during the Empire, however, when permanent circuses become
somewhat more common in the western Mediterranean especial-
ly in North Africa and Spain, after the late Flavian and Trajanic
reconstructions to the Circus Maximus 57, the surviving curse-ma-
terial is decidely sparse.
The proveniences of defixiones against charioteers likewise sug-
gest some uncertainty about the most effective location for their
deposit: should the crucial consideration be proximity to the in-
termediaries to the other world, particularly the nekydaimon res-
ident in a tomb, or the metonymic authority of the circus itself,
where the curse was intended to exercise its effect? Table 2 lists
the evidence for provenience so far as it is known.
On this evidence, the idea that charioteer-defixiones were pref-
erentially deposited in circuses is clearly false. Moreover, no
such texts have been found in the various excavations of the
Circus Maximus at Rome, and even the late-antique Porta S.
Sebastiano texts (no. 12) were deposited in a tomb, not actu-
ally in the Circus of Maxentius 59. In fact, deposition in the cir-
cus itself is rare (only one at Lepcis, six at Antioch). As for
Hadrumetum and Carthage, which are the most important sites
in this connection, whereas at Hadrumetum all the relevant finds
were certainly or very probably made in the necropoleis on the
Kairouan road (admittedly the circus, not very far away, has
never been excavated), at Carthage practitioners seem to have
differed among themselves on this question: of the colonial-
period finds with known proveniences, the great majority
come from the tombs of officiales who had served in the procu-
rator’s office, just two were found in the grand ‘Fontaine aux
mille amphores’, linked to the cistern-complex of La Malga –
fresh waters of all types being notorious as the habitat of dae-

54
According to HEINTZ 2000, p. 166 only five defixiones were found, some in the
euripus others at the metae of the circus in 1934, but this seems to be an error,
since JORDAN 2000, p. 27 nos. 102-07 and TREMEL 2004, pp. 105-07 nos. 11-16
list six. Of these only Princeton Art Museum inv. no. 3603-156 = JORDAN 2000,
p. 27 no. 102 = TREMEL 2004, pp. 105 s. no. 11 has actually been published. Inv.
no. 3618-162 has been identified as a charioteer curse but as far as I know not
edited (JORDAN 2000, p. 27 no. 103). A further four (JORDAN 2000, nos. 104-107)
have not been unrolled but are assumed to be circus-defixiones.
55
Etruria: OLIVOVÁ 1989, pp. 78 s.; Republic: RAWSON 1981. According to Livy
1.35.7-9 the site of the later Circus Maximus was first laid out for horse-racing by
L. Tarquinius Priscus, trad. date 616-578 BCE; cf. MEIJER 2010, pp. 28 s.
56
PISANI SARTORIO 2008, pp. 49 s., instructively compares the more than 160 known
theatres. Races were often held in so-called campi, ‘sports fields’, of which some
twenty-two are known. As regards Africa, note the observations of FLORIANI
SQUARCIAPINO 1979, p. 277 on the disparity between the traces of monumental
circuses and the epigraphic evidence for spectacles involving chariot-racing.
57
Circus Maximus: CIANCIO ROSSETTO 2008, p. 24 with figs. 8 and 9. For circuits
in the western Mediterranean see the excellent survey by HUMPHREY 1986, pp.
286-370. More recent surveys: Italy: PISANI SARTORIO 2008, pp. 73-76 (54 items
in Appendix, incl. Sicily); North Africa: MAURIN 2008 (mainly III-IVp, except for
Carthage and Hadrumetum); GHADDHAB 2008, pp. 122-28 (Appendix); Spain: NO-
GALES BASARRATE 2008 (17, of which 12 have been excavated). The circus at Tri-
er, though first mentioned in literary sources of IVp, was constructed in IIp:
GOETHERT 2007, pp. 344 s.
58
This text, considered by TREMEL 2004, p. 174 no. 64 to be directed against char-
ioteers, was found together with the venatores texts in the amphitheatre (see n.
48 above). Here he follows WÜNSCH 1900, p. 266 no. 266 = DT 246, who thought
he could read rJovseouı in A5 (only scraps of text are legible, since the tablet suf-
fered greatly through Delattre’s efforts to unroll it). As far as I can see, however,
Tremel has misunderstood Audollent’s Latin commentary here, for, while agree-
ing with Wünsch’s reading, he - rightly in my view - considered that the drawing
of Hermes, with petasos and staff, kneeling on a human victim and cutting his
throat, indicates a reference to the amphitheatre (Cagnat cited Tertullian, Apol.
15.5: «Mercurium mortuos cauterio examinantem»; JUNKELMANN 2000b, p. 75 was
evidently unaware of this defixio), and duly included it among the venatores-texts;
none of the other legible words hint at the circus, so I prefer to omit it here.
59
On the Circus of Maxentius see IOPPOLO - PISANI SARTORIO 1999; PISANI SAR-
TORIO 2008, pp. 50-70.
06 Gordon (35-62):Layout 1 31-07-2012 9:01 Pagina 41
FIXING THE RACE: MANAGING RISKS IN THE NORTH AFRICAN CIRCUS
mones 60. The excavation of the circus conducted by the Uni-
versity of Georgia between 1982-1990, however, produced thir-
teen such texts from different locations in the arena, most of
them apparently loose in the surface-material. Three have been
published; one of them is parallel in lay-out and content to two
venator-texts from the amphitheatre, another, in Latin, has a
drawing of the charioteer to be ‘caught’ by the curse 61. Two
other texts have been unrolled but proved to be anepigraphic;
another of the unpublished texts was found nailed into the track
near the starting-gates; the only known parallel, at Lepcis
Magna, was not fixed by a nail 62. Given the number of defix-
iones found in the Carthaginian amphitheatre, it may be that it
was this site, with its repetitive deaths, that suggested the idea
of trying out a metonymically-suggestive alternative to tombs.
If, as seems likely, at least one of the new Carthaginian texts
has no connection with charioteering, the site may conceivably
have become a recognized alternative to a necropolis 63. All in
all, however, proximity to the nekydaimones evidently appeared
the more effective choice over the long term.
If the earliest-known circus-defixiones have been found at Carthage
and Hadrumetum, is it possible that the genre was also invented
in these cities? It is striking that there are no formal matrices or
models in the Graeco-Egyptian magical papyri; all we find is a cou-
ple of allusions to the possibility of using a given compound (mul-
ti-targeted) text for malign magic against charioteers 64. The only
recipe that claims to give directions for controlling charioteers (a
kavtocoı) falls into the same category: it occurs as an insertion in-
to an extensively re-worked text for non-specific malign magic, pre-
sented as useful not merely against charioteers in the stadium but
also for sending (bad) dreams, as a forcible love spell and as a di-
60
The tombs were in the linked necropoleis of Bir el-Djebbana and Bir ez-Zitoun
due west of the city, about 450m NW of the circus and with a large bath-complex
nearby (LANTIER 1922, pp. 24, 26). The location is best seen on the coloured map
in AUDOLLENT 1901, between pp. 664-65 – they are not shown on many later maps.
Fountain: CARTON 1920; AUDOLLENT 1933, pp. 120 s. (= SEG 9: 837-38 = TREMEL
2004, pp. 175-77 nos. 65-66). The table in JORDAN 1988a, p. 119 is misleading,
since many more charioteer-texts were found in the tombs of Bir el-Djebbana and
Bir ez-Zitoun than he indicates, namely DT nos. 236-45. Defixiones in wells: OG-
DEN 1999, pp. 23-24; in (hot) baths: PGM VII 435-36, 467-77, XXXVI 333-34,
339-40, with DUNBABIN 1989, pp. 40-41; rivers and baths as the abode of evil spir-
its: BONNER 1932 with SEG 41: 1530 ll.107-09 = KOTANSKY 1994 no. 52.
61
PINTOZZI -NORMAN 1992, p. 12; further references in NORMAN, HAECKL 1993,
p. 238 n.6. For the published texts, see JORDAN 1988, pp. 120-23 no. 1 = SEG 40:
921 = TREMEL 2004, pp. 177 s. no. 67; JORDAN 1988, pp. 129 s. no. 3 = TREMEL
2004, pp. 179 s. no. 68 (in Latin).
62
PINTOZZI - NORMAN 1992, p. 12 with 17 nn. 12 and 20; a photo in GAGER 1992,
p. 19 fig. 4. Lepcis: SEG 26: 1837 = TREMEL 2004, p. 180 no. 69. One of the tablets
from the circus at Antioch was pierced by a nail, but in a quite different manner
(HEINTZ 2000, p. 165 no. 54 - rather a poor photograph).
63
JORDAN 1988a, pp. 126-29 no. 2 = SEG 40: 922, a largely unintelligible text in
Greek. It is not listed by Tremel, evidently because there is no apparent connec-
tion to the circus.
64
Attacks on charioteers are alluded to as possible uses for ‘high-scatter’ (non-
specific) malign recipes at PGM IV 2212 and VII 429. There are no texts, for-
mular or ‘activated’, against charioteers in SupplMag, though no. 53 is directed
against an athlete.
65
PGM III 162f., cf. 94; there is a drawing of a charioteer between two daimones
after line 71 (see PREISENDANZ 1973-1974, vol. I, pl. II fig. 3). The standard com-
mentary on this complicated text, the ‘Funerary ritual for the Cat’, is HARRAUER
1987, pp. 12-53. It seems likely that the editor found a version which a practi-
tioner had indeed used as a charioteer-curse (hence the references to quadrigae,
charioteers, two horse-chariots and one-horse chariots in ll.19-20; and the draw-
ing), and then fitted it back into a more complex text (the drawing is not placed
at the end of the entire procedure). The origin of pMimaut is quite unknown –
there is no reason to think it was part of Anastasi’s collection: BRASHEAR 1995, p.
3404.
41
akopos, i.e. a spell to break up relationships 65. Assuming that an
editor incorporated this recipe into his longer text, it does prove
that at least one practitioner in Egypt had devised a text against
charioteers before 300p, the post-quem date of pMimaut 66. In my
view, however, that is not a sufficient reason for claiming that for-
mulary models of the usual kind existed in Egypt. If the original
author did create an incantation of the kind that we find at
Carthage and Hadrumetum, detailing the events of the race, the
editor suppressed it – there is not a single specific reference in the
text to its asserted aims 67. Not one ‘activated’ text on papyrus
against charioteers is known from Ptolemaic or Roman Egypt, de-
spite the fact that races were very probably held in the metropoleis
all the way up the Nile. Yet chariot-racing, as well no doubt as ath-
letic competitions and gladiatorial shows, was perfectly familiar
there: the Great Paris magical codex (PGM IV 2160-62) offers a
brief recipe, consisting of just three unconnected Homeric lines
(Il. 10. 564, 521, 572), as a protective amulet for charioteers 68. It
is true that only a very limited number of monumental circuits are
known in Egypt (only the so-called “Stadion” in Alexandria and
the relatively small circuit some way up the Nile at Antinoupolis) 69.
But, given the variety of curse-texts from Egypt, both in formula-
ries and ‘activated’, that fact hardly provides an explanation for
the absence of relevant texts 70. It seems fair to conclude that the
genre of the charioteer-defixio (and likewise no doubt that of the
venator-defixio) was not of much importance in Roman Egypt 71.
If so, and given that the earliest known texts of this type derive
from North Africa, it seems plausible on present evidence to think
that it was the encounter of itinerant Graeco-Egyptian practi-
tioners with the popularity of the Roman-type circus in Carthage
and (perhaps somewhat later) Hadrumetum that suggested to
66
Unfortunately DECKER 2008 does not discuss this passage.
67
The text also seems muddled about the purpose of the recipe, which is anoth-
er sign of inept editorial work. The overall value of the ritual drowning of the Cat
is clearly malign; yet the instruction to sprinkle the water in which it has been
drowned in the stadium ‘or wherever you are’ (l. 40-42) seems to suggest a pro-
tective ritual; that also seems to be how GAGER 1992, p. 59 no. 7 takes it, since
he compares it to a recipe for that purpose from the Sefer ha-Razim. As we shall
see, exactly the same sprinkling technique for protecting horses against magical
attack is recommended by Hilarion to Italicus, the Christian stable-owner at Gaza
(cf. DÖLGER 1929c).
68
A charioteer is to carry a magnetite with the protective slip of iron (lamna) on
which the verses are inscribed – a recommendation that itself seems clearly un-
der-determined (cf. [iron] «ad inane nescio quid currit atque, ut propius venit [to
the magnet], adsilit»: Plin., Nat. 36.127). All the Homeric verses are taken from
the passage where Diomedes and Odysseus capture Rhesus’ chariot and horses;
Iliad 10,564 specifically mentions the chariot. On the basis of such minimal ma-
terial HEINTZ 2000, p. 166 constructs the implausible idea of entire magical ‘pack-
ages’ being acquired from ‘magicians’.
69
DECKER 2008. As is well known, Greek chariot-racing traditionally did not re-
quire monumental constructions.
70
Pausanias however cites another explanation for the taraxippos provided by ‘an
(mageu
sai deinovn) and had buried something – presumably a curse-tablet – in
Egyptian’, who claimed that Amphion and Orpheus were clever magicians
the track to frighten the horses: 6,20,18.
71
A poorly-preserved curse against an athlete, now in Cologne, was found at
Oxyrhynchus, the major metropolis of the Fayûm: JORDAN 1994, pp. 321 s. =
TREMEL 2004, pp. 103 s. no. 10; but it is dated III/IVp. Part of it clearly draws on

n tou;ı [ojfqalmouvı]) does recall DT no. 241 =
themes from forcible erotic spells; but one motif, that the runners’ [eyes] should
be clouded (ajmauvrwson aujtw
TREMEL 2004, p. 167 s. no. 60 l.13 s. (Carthage), where the same word is used
against horses. It cannot of course be shown that the genre was not developed in
Alexandria or at Antinoupolis or Oxyrhynchus; but that argument cuts both ways.
One reason for this lack of interest may have had to do with the organization of
chariot-racing in the eastern Mediterranean, which until Late Antiquity differed
substantially from the pattern that spread, so far as we know, to the western
Mediterranean from Rome, cf. CAMERON 1976, pp. 6-10.
06 Gordon (35-62):Layout 1 31-07-2012 9:01 Pagina 42

42 RICHARD GORDON

them the possibility of extending their range of ‘products’ to this

area of social activity, where high risks were involved that might
be limited by obtaining direct access to the powers of the other
world. Another argument in favour of this conclusion is the in-
terest these texts show in what we may call ‘textual performativ-
ity’, particularly formal devices. All reveal an intense interest in
the communicative success of the rolled-up tablet as a major, if
not central, element in a larger ritual performance. The number
of different variations of lay-out and scheme at Carthage and
Hadrumetum is extraordinary, particularly in comparison with the
unadventurousness of later charioteer-defixiones (with the partial
exception of the Porta S. Sebastiano series in Rome).
We may just take four examples, more or less at random. One of
the most original is a set of seven long texts in Greek directed
against different teams and drivers, all of which were found in
various tombs of the Bir el-Djebbana/Bir ez-Zitoun necropoleis
(Fig. 1). By a striking transposition of model, which itself proves
familiarity with the appearance and use of the Schwindelschema
characteristic of Graeco-Egyptian amuletic gems for medical in-
dications, which are virtually exclusively employed with palin-
dromes and other voces magicae 72, the entire text is written in suc-
cessively shorter lines, so that the curse itself formally reproduces
the nullification of its targets 73. The practitioner has created a ma-
trix-text which he could use for different individual clients or cas-
es by simply altering the names. The same device re-appears in
another Carthaginian charioteer-defixio with a completely differ-
ent text – either by the same practitioner, indicating a high de-
gree of compositional facility (or, possibly, use of a borrowed for-
mulary), or an indication of the sharing of formal ideas to improve
the ‘felicity conditions’ of the curse 74.
The tablet in Fig. 1 was found in the same tomb as another of the
series (DT 235 = TREMEL 2004, 155f. no. 54) and with a text of
completely different design (Fig. 2). The names of 28 race-hors-
es are deployed in two columns on either side of a rough sketch
of the circus and nine starting-gates, all seen from above 75. Im-
mediately below the gates is a series of voces in Greek letters:
karouraccqa, braccqaq, hqaeiqouma …followed by the injunc-
tion to the nekydaemon: «EXCITO [t]e demon qui (h)ic conver-
sans …» 76. The drawing is intended as a performative extension
of the curse-section, not merely evoking the location where the
curse shall take its effect but graphically anticipating the presence
of the doomed horses in that space 77. A further performative de-
tail is the sequence of voces, part of which repeats braccqaq twice,
that encloses the entire scheme.
Two other texts can be dealt with more briefly, since they are vari- Fig. 1. Charioteer-defixio from Carthage (DT no. 237). The tablet measures 7.7 x 7.7
ations on the enclosure scheme. One is a text found in the same cm, and the letters are unreadable with the naked eye. Design: CIL VIII 12508.

72
See most recently MASTROCINQUE 2009.
73
DT nos. 234-40 = TREMEL 2004, pp. 152-67 nos. 53-59. DT no. 237 = TREMEL
2004, pp. 158-61 no. 56 is translated in GAGER 1992, pp. 60-62 no. 9. This series,
though addressed to a nekydaimon, uses hardly any voces or other devices; two
however (DT nos. 238-39 = TREMEL 2004, pp. 161- 64 nos. 57-58) carry drawings
of the charioteer(s) in the centre of the text. They may perhaps be compared to
the charioteer in the drawing in PGM III after l. 70, although he is flanked by two
daimones (see n. 65 above).
74
MOLINIER 1897 = DT 242 = TREMEL 2004, pp. 169-71 no. 61; tr. GAGER 1992,
pp. 62-64 no. 10. This text however deploys a far greater theological arsenal that
the first series, organised on a specific rhetorical matrix, and operates with a quite
different notion of the nature of the magical attack upon the horses. For ‘felicity
conditions’, see GORDON 2005, where I discuss the ‘Baitmo Arbitto’ group at
Hadrumetum (DT 286-91 + AE 1911: 6), another extremely ‘perfomative’ series.
75
DT no. 233 = CIL VIII 12504 = ILS 8754 = TREMEL 2004, pp. 150-52 no. 52.
AUDOLLENT identified another group of incisions above the circus as a pannus,
i.e. a faction emblem or banner. On the convention of the controlling ‘bird’s eye
view’ from above, often used in mosaic and painted representations of the circus,
notably at Carthage (e.g. the circus floor-mosaic in the house on the Odéon) see
BERGMANN 2008, pp. 365-369 with figs. 7 and 8b; MAURIN 2008, p. 106 fig. 18.
76
I take it that the proximity between the gates and the voces is another type of
performativity. Eight starting gates are depicted on DT no. 244 = TREMEL 2004,
p. 173 no. 63; this text was found in the same tomb as one of the ‘wedge’ series
(DT no. 234 = TREMEL 2004, pp. 152-55 no. 53).
77
Most ‘hortatory drawings’ on defixiones depict the intended victims, as in the
case of the charioteers mentioned in n. 73, in DT no. 244 (immediately above the
starting-gates: see previous note), DT no. 245 (charioteer caught in bonds), just
as in JORDAN 1988a, p. 130 fig. 2 (from the Fontaine des mille amphores = TREMEL
2004, p. 179 no. 68, who omits the drawing however). DT no. 285 = TREMEL 2004,
p. 131 no. 35 (Hadrumetum) shows a horse inscribed with the stable-owner’s name.
06 Gordon (35-62):Layout 1 31-07-2012 9:01 Pagina 43

FIXING THE RACE: MANAGING RISKS IN THE NORTH AFRICAN CIRCUS 43

Fig. 3. Charioteer-defixio from Carthage (DTAud no. 241), enclosure technique.

11.5 x 11.5 cm. Drawing: CIL VIII 12511.

Fig. 2. Charioteer-defixio from Carthage (DTAud no. 233), showing the circus and
start-gates seen from above. H. 32 cm, w. 17 cm. Drawing: CIL VIII 12504.

Fig. 4. Charioteer-defixio from Hadrumetum (DTAud no. 275), with charaktêres

serving to highlight specific groups and individuals. H. 17 cm, w. 10.3 cm. Image:
AUDOLLENT 1904, 382.
06 Gordon (35-62):Layout 1 31-07-2012 9:01 Pagina 44
44
tomb as Fig. 2 at Carthage, where large, almost monumental
charaktêres rather than voces enclose the lateral borders, supple-
mented by much smaller signs at the top and bottom (Fig. 3) 78.
One of an important and well-known series at Hadrumetum goes
much further in its deployment of charaktêres, using them to cre-
ate specific blocks of horses and charioteers, as graphic signals to
the addressee in his work of overthrow and destruction (Fig. 4) 79.
These four examples of ‘formal performatity’ could easily be in-
creased 80. In an earlier article on two series from Hadrumetum,
I argued that this formal creativity was due to a lack of deep knowl-
edge of Graeco-Egyptian techniques 81. More aware now of the
range of skill among practitioners even in Egypt, I would now
rather lay emphasis on the freedom to experiment with a new
genre of curse in the encounter with the institution of the Roman
circus.
THE CIRCUS IN THE ROMAN IMAGINAIRE:
LITERARY AND ICONOGRAPHIC CONVENTIONS
With two notable exceptions, the surviving charioteer-defixiones
from Rome, Beirut, Damascus, Apamea and Antioch, all of which
date from the early IVp or later, are heavily routinized: their imag-
inative focus is upon the theologico-rhetorical apparatus that the
practitioner is in a position to deploy, including drawings (espe-
cially in the case of the Porta S. Sebastiano series from near the
Circus of Maxentius), not upon the nominal object, the interfer-
ence with the race, which figures only in a few verbal synonyms
for “come to grief” 82.
Even the two exceptions however show clear evidence of adap-
tation of sequences from other magical genres (such as forcible
erotic texts) and from Christian literature about demonic attack 83.
By contrast, those from Carthage and Hadrumetum, which are all
from the High Empire, concentrate on the task of how most ef-
fectively to manage – and to imagine – the undoing of the target
team(s). We have already looked at a selection of their visual ef-
fects; I now turn to their treatment of the pragmatic aim, the fail-
ure of specific teams in the circus.
To simplify the matter, we can say that the practitioners in these
two cities developed two basic models of procedure, one in which
the major device of insistence is listing or enumeration, the sec-
ond where a quasi-narrative of anticipated events in the circus pro-
vides the imaginative focus. These models were evidently consid-
ered as options not as strict alternatives – the narratives contain
lists, and the lists contain abbreviated narratives; lists in Latin are
characteristic of the practitioners at Hadrumetum, narratives in
Greek of one highly competent practitioner at Carthage.
The text of DT no. 284 = TREMEL 2004, pp. 129 s. no. 34 provides
a good example of the technique of listing as an expressive device:
78
DT no. 241 = TREMEL 2004, pp. 167 s. no. 60; tr. with image in GAGER 1992,
pp. 65-67 no. 12 with fig. 8.
79
DT no. 275 = TREMEL 2004, pp. 117 s. no. 25 = SICHET 1996. The series is DT
nos. 275-84 + AE 1907: 68-69; DT no. 285 is related; see GORDON 2005, pp. 76-
80.
80
Cf. esp. DT no. 243 = TREMEL 2004, pp. 171 s. no. 62; Jordan 1988a, pp. 129-
34 no. 3 (both Carthage).
81
GORDON 2005, pp. 68 s.
82
DT no. 243 = TREMEL 2004, pp. 171 s. no. 62 (from Bir el-Djebbana/Bir ez-Zi-
toun), however, where the fragmentary main text is in Latin and the invocations
RICHARD GORDON
«Privatianu(m) Naucelliu(m) Supe(r)s[tian]u(m) russei Re-
pentinu(m) / Supe(r)sti[te(m) russ]ei servu(m) Reguli Eliu(m)
Castore(m) Elegante(m) / Glaucu(m) Argutu(m) veneti De-
stroiugu(m) Glauci cadant Elegante(m) cada{n}t / 5Ideu(m) Cen-
tauru(m) cadant Bracatu(m) Virgineu(m) cadant Noviciu(m) /
Securu(m) Mantineu(m) Prevalente(m) Ilarinu(m) cadant Danu-
viu(m) / Pancratiu(m) Oclopecta(m) Verbosu(m) Crinitu(m)
cadant Auricomu(m) / Elegante(m) Cesareu(m) Improbu(m)
Vagarfita(m) cadant / Paratu(m) Delusore(m) cadant Latrone(m)
Vagulu(m) cadant Hellenu(m) /10 Divite(m) Garulu(m) cadant
Adamatu(m) cada{n}t Danuviu(m) cada{n}t / Acceptore(m) ca-
da{n}t Germanicu(m) veneti cada{n}t Elegante(m) / Eolu(m)
Decore(m) Oceanu(m) Eminente(m) Tagu(m) cadant Eburnu(m)
/ Epafu(m) cadant Agricola(m) cada{n}t [Mir]andu(m?) veneti
Multivolu(m) / Capria(m) Inhumanu(m) cadant Voluptate(m)
Capriolu(m) Viatore(m) /15 Securu(m) [Ma]guriu(m?)84 Au-
dace(m) Pardu(m) Tigride(m) Percussore(m) / Aliatore(m) ca-
da(n)t Massinissa(m) cada{n}t franga{n}t / Privatianu(m) cadat
vertat Naucelliu(m) cadat vertat / Supe(r)stite(m) russei servu(m)
Reguli cada{n}t verta{n}t / Eliu(m) Castore(m) cada(n)t verta(n)t
Eliu(m) cadat vertat Lidu(m) /20 Repentinu(m) cada(n)t verta(n)t
Naucelliu(m) vertat / [3 v]ertant Privatianu(m) / [3]
Supe(r)stite(m) russei se[rvu(m) Re]guli / [Cas]tore(m) et
Eliu(m) et Repentinu(m) et Castore(m) / et Pr[ivati]anu(m) et
Naucelliu(m) nec agitare / possint …»
In this text and the analogous series (many of which are directed
against [some of] the same charioteers, see Table 6 below) it is
knowledge of names and their reiteration that provides the ma-
jor rhetorical force of the curse – a quasi-narrative is provided,
but it is brief and clearly of secondary importance to listing 85. That
enumeration is a device here becomes clear when one tries to work
out just how many charioteers are involved and how many hors-
es: Audollent thought there were perhaps seven charioteers and
sixty horses, but saw that the confusion is such – for example, are
there two men, (H)elius and Castor, or one named (H)elius Cas-
tor, another named (H)elius, and yet another named Castor (com-
pare ll.2, 19, 23) – that one simply cannot be sure 86. How these
totals fit with what is known from other sources of the organiza-
tion of such races is unknown. Sometimes individual horses are
picked out by the wish cada(n)t – an anaphoric imperative, as in
a litany –, at other times groups of two, three, four and five names
are bundled together, so that one cannot tell whether these are
quadriga-teams or other unit-types, e.g. bigae or ternae. No attempt
seems to have been made systematically to distinguish the Red
horses from the Blues; there may have been good operational rea-
sons for this, but, in the absence of such ‘internal’ knowledge, the
text presents the implied reader with numerous puzzles. In all this
unclarity, the text is quite typical of the various enumeration-se-
in Greek, also reveals a high valuation of voces (albeit in a markedly visual form).
The main text seems to be quite independent of the other texts at Carthage.
83
The exceptions are DT no. 187 ll.57-60 = TREMEL 2004, pp. 215 s. no. 89 (Rome,
c. 300 CE) and SEG 34: 1347 = TREMEL 2004, p. 108 no. 17 (Apamea, V-VIp); for
the latter, cf. n. 111 below.
84
From Clauss/Slaby. Tremel and Clauss/Slaby still print [Au]guriu(m) here, even
though the correct name, [Ma]guriu(m), turned up in AE 1907: 68 l.31.
85
On the rhetoric of listing in magical texts, see GORDON 2000.
86
FLORIANI SQUARCIAPINO 1979, p. 283 counts nine charioteers in the sequence,
referring to DT no. 279.
06 Gordon (35-62):Layout 1 31-07-2012 9:01 Pagina 45
FIXING THE RACE: MANAGING RISKS IN THE NORTH AFRICAN CIRCUS
ries from Hadrumetum: it was evidently not the facts themselves
but the simulacrum of accuracy that was important to these prac-
titioners in the effort to gain illocutionary force 87.
Implied or quasi-narratives
In this section however I am more concerned with the quasi-nar-
rative option. The most elaborately imagined of such narratives
occurs in the sequence of seven tablets from tombs in the Bir el-
Djebbana/Bir ez-Zitoun necropoleis that I have already mentioned
(see Fig. 1). The following is a composite version of the text, main-
ly based on the most complete version, that of DT no. 237 =
TREMEL 2004, 158-60 no. 56:
…katavdhson aujtoi
ı to;n drovmon th;n duvnamin th;n yuch;n

n th;n neivkhn, ejm-
povdison aujtoi
ı tou;ı povdaı, ejkkovyon ejkneuvrwson auj-
th;n oJrmh;n th;n tacuvthta, a[fele aujtw

sin th/
au[rion hJmevra/ ejn tw
/ hJp-
podrovmw/ mhde; trevcein mhde; peripatei
n mhde; neikh
sai
tou;ı i{na mh; dunasqw
mhde; ejxelqei
n tou;ı pulw
naı tw
n iJppafivwn mhde; pros-
baivnein th;n ajrivan mhvte to;n spavtion, mhvte kukleu
sai
tou;ı kampth
raı, ajlla; pesevtwsan su;n toi
ı ijdivoiı hJniov-
coiı .... katavdhson aujtoi
ı ta;ı cei
raı, ejntuvlixon aujtw
n

n th;n neivkhn,

sin blevpein
tou;ı mavsteigaı ejiı ta;ı hJnivaı, a[fele aujtw
tou;ı ijdivouı ajntipavlouı hJniocou
nteı, ajlla; ma
llon a{rpa-
to;n ajpovbasin kai; th;n o{rasin i{na mh; dunasqw

n ijdivwn aJrmavtwn kai; stevyon ejpi; th;n
gh
n i{na pesevtwsan movnoi ejm panti tovpw/ tou
iJppo-
son aujtou;ı eJk tw
drovmou surovmenoi, mavlista de; ejn toi
ı kampth
rsin, meta;
blavbhı tou
swvmatoı kai; skelw
n katavgmatoı, su;n toi
ı
i{ppoiı ou{ı ejlauvnousin.
[against the horses:] «… inhibit their racing, their force, their
spirit, their dash, their speed, prevent them from winning, hin-
der their hooves, do them down, make them weak so that in
the circus tomorrow they may not race nor manage the bend
nor win, nor get out of the starting-gates, nor reach the alba
linea or the circuit proper, nor round the metae, but may they
fall, together with their drivers … [now directed against the
charioteers:] bind their hands, make their whips get twisted
up in the reins, prevent them from winning, prevent them
from starting off, block their view so they cannot see the driv-
ers of the opposing teams, but rather jerk them from their
own chariots and ditch them, such that they alone in the en-
tire circus may fall and be dragged <along the track>, espe-
cially at the metae, so that their bodies and limbs are bruised,
together with the horses they drive …».
87
In the next section below I return to this question of the nature and source of
the information provided. I confess I see no evidence to support the idea, stressed
e.g. by PUVIS D’ESCURAC 1987, p. 451, that the intention of such texts was to al-
ter ‘fate’. This is a typical modern superimposition.
88
Competent descriptions in e.g. LANDES 1990; JUNKELMANN 2000a; GOERTHERT
2007.
89
Mittere mappam: Martial., 12.28.9; cf. MARCHET 2008.
90
FAUQUET 2008, p. 265 with fig. 4 calls this the ‘distance d’élancement’. The
carceres at Carthage have not been excavated; they are restored on the plans from
those of the circus of Maxentius in Rome; cf. MAURIN 2008, p. 93 with figs. 3- 4.
91
With PISANI SARTORIO 2008, 61, I use spina to refer to the complex central bar-
rier formed by the euripus, the metae, the lap-counters and various other con-
structions that varied from circus to circus. Even if the word is only attested in
45
Fig. 5. Simplified ground-plan of a circus, showing the raking of the carceres (start-
ing-gates), the alba linea at the first meta (where the race proper began) and the
creta, opposite the judges’ stand, which marked the finishing-line after fourteen
laps. Based on HUMPHREY 1986, p. 346 fig. 154.
The attack is directed first at the horses, then against their driv-
ers. The first section (which in the actual text is repeated and made
specific by the enumeration of names) is itself sub-divided into four
sequences: (a) aggression against what we may take as abstract ideas
or properties of central importance in specialized circus-jargon: drov-
moı, duvnamiı, yuchv, oJrmhv, tacuvthı, which together, in the Eng-
lish term ‘form’, encapsulate those mental, nervous and physical
energies essential to winning such a race; (b) a more precise attack
in the same sense, to cause the horses’ hooves to drag (ejmpovdi-
son… tou;ı povdaı), and their strength to fail (ejkkovyon, ejkneuvr-
wson); (c) a thumb-nail sketch of the course of such a race: run-

sin mhde; trevcein mhde; peripatei
n mhde; neikh
sai);
ning, turning at the metae, passing the finishing-line first (i{na mh;
dunasqw
(d) a fuller narrative, consisting of four ‘moments’ and a calamity:
getting out of the starting-gates; reaching the alba linea; the cir-
cuit proper (spatium); rounding the metae; and the idea of ‘falling’
(pesevtwsan), which evidently includes crashing or being upset.
The basis of this fuller narrative is a conventionalized representa-
tion, comparable to some of the mosaic images I discuss later, of the
myriad individual events that might occur in the course of a circus-
race 88. This representation is itself based on the topography of the
circus, as will be clear from Fig. 5, which shows a simplified plan of
the circus at Saguntum. The first problem was getting the horses to
start quickly, without shying when the gates of the carceres were sud-
denly opened once the editor ludorum had given the starting-signal
with the mappa 89; in most ‘modern’ circuses, as at Saguntum, these
gates were staggered slightly so as to give all the starters a more or
less equal chance (aequo carcere) of simultaneously reaching the for-
mal start of the race, the alba linea, the ‘white line’ 90. From this line,
the charioteers could start blocking one another and cutting in: the
straight on the right hand side of the spina (the central barrier) 91
between the alba linea and the second white line, was thus given a
special name, spatium 92. The second white line (called creta by Pliny),
where the judges’ stand was placed, naturally became the sole fo-
cus of interest as the race neared the end of the final lap 93. The fourth
‘moment’ – in fact there were fourteen of them, since each chariot
Late Antiquity, there seems no justification for recent claims (e.g. BERGMANN 2008,
p. 367) that the ‘correct’ term was euripus.
92
E.g. Ovid, Am. 3.2.79, «nunc saltem supera spatioque insurge patenti!» The word
occurs as ispatium in DT no. 244 B 6 (Carthage) = TREMEL 2004, p. 173 no. 63,
and in Greek (spavtioı) in the ‘wedge’ series from Carthage (DT nos. 234 l.22;
237 l. 16; 238 ll.34 s., 239 ll. 15, 30, 240 ll. 34 s.). FAUQUET 2008, pp. 265 s. with
fig. 4 calls this stretch the ‘début de la course libre’ (based on Cassiod., Var. 3,51,7).
In Silius Italicus, Pun. 16,335 and 395, however, spatium/-a apparently denotes
the length of track between the carceres and the alba linea.
93
Plin., Nat. 8,160. This line, which is clearly marked on the floor mosaic at Ly-
on (Fig. 6 here, p. 000) and is also shown in the large mosaic at Silin, Tunisia:
FAUQUET 2008, p. 279 fig. 18), marked both the point from which the seven laps
were counted and the winning-post.
06 Gordon (35-62):Layout 1 31-07-2012 9:01 Pagina 46
46
had to navigate each meta seven times – was rounding the sharp
bend at either end of the spina 94. As in explicit narratives, therefore,
real-world time and distance have been manipulated for instrumental
ends, the relatively brief distance between carceres and the second
line being noticed three times, whereas the fourteen half-laps of the
actual race are reduced to the one idea of navigating the metae.
In all seven surviving examples of this text, the repetition of this
‘horse-narrative’ ends with a rapid list of charioteers, which itself
immediately segues into a non-sequential narrative enumerating
six kinds of possible mishap that might occur at any point in the
race. The first two focus on their dexterity (“bind their hands,
make their whips get twisted up in the reins”), the two next fix
rather oddly first upon the finish, but the thought then shifts back
to the start (“prevent them from winning, prevent them from start-
ing off”). The last pair concentrates on the race from the subjec-
tive point of view of the charioteers – not being able to see clear-
ly through the dust and confusion increased the risk of making a
mistake or even crashing («jerk them from their chariots…»), end-
ing with the bruising from being dragged along the sand and the
subjective humiliation of being the only drivers to be so unlucky.
Two other, more compressed, sequences at Carthage, perhaps by
the same practitioner, likewise specify subjective experiences in their
effort to produce telling rhetorical images. The first transfers the
idea of not being able to see to the horses, and adds lack of wind:

n ta; skelh
kai; th;n oJrmh;n kai; to; phv-

n ta; o[mmata i{na
katavdhson aujtw


duma kai; to;n drovmon, ajmauvrwson aujtw
mh; blevpwsin, strevblwson aujtw n th; n yuch;n kai; th;n
ta;ı cira;ı kai; th;n kefalh;n kai; th;n kardivan tou
Bik-
kardivan i{na mh; pnevwsin.... katadhvsate ta; skevlh kai;
torikou
...kai; tou;ı i{ppouı ...
DT 241, ll. 12 ss. = TREMEL 2004 no. 60
«… inhibit their limbs and their dash, their starting off, their
racing, cloud their eyes so that they cannot see, squeeze their
wind and their heart so they cannot draw breath, … [now
against the charioteers:] inhibit the feet and hands and mind
and heart of Victoricus … and his horses …»
The second shifts from the charioteers’ physical resources to their
minds and their vision:

/ kivrkw/ ....kai; katadhvshı pa
n
mevloı pa
n neu
ron tou;ı w[mouı tou;ı karpou;ı tou;ı
i{na diakonhvshı moi ejn tw

naı tw
n hJniovcwn, ... basavnison aujtw
n th;n dianoivan

n ti poiw
sin,
ajnkw


ta;ı frevnaı th;n ai[sqhsin i{na mh; now siv
ajpovknison aujtw n ta; o[ m mata i{ n a mh; blev p wsin mhvte
aujtoi; mhvte oiJ i{ppoi ...
DT 242 ll.48 ss. = TREMEL 2004 no. 61
«…so that you may do me a service in the circus … and in-
hibit the charioteers’ entire body, their sinews, their shoul-
ders, their wrists, their arms … disrupt their thoughts, their
minds, their vision so that they cannot think or act, gloze their
eyes so that neither they nor the horses can see …»
94
M. Peres has created a fine digital model of the circus-race for the Ausonius
project, which unfortunately will not reproduce well, but is worth consulting, cf.
FAUQUET 2008, p. 268 fig.7. In most circuses, including the one at Lepcis Magna,
the spina was not laid out equidistant from the cavea, but slightly aslant, so that
the track just before the two sets of metae was narrower than elsewhere. The ob-
RICHARD GORDON
The aim of these carefully-organized details is to increase the il-
locutionary force of the curse; rhetorical authority mounts with
each display of specialized ‘insider’ knowledge. At the same time,
the information given is highly selective: no mention of the map-
pa, or of the personnel and starting mechanism of the carceres, of
the two kinds of lap-counters, of accidents involving the sparsores,
or the hortatores, no extended accounts of spoiling tactics such
as we find in literary sources, no technical terms such as meta acu-
ta, or metam stringere (or their Greek equivalents). This concen-
tration on the essential is still clearer in the abbreviated sequences
in Latin found at Hadrumetum, some of which may even be sum-
mary translations of these texts from Carthage:
«Obligate et gravate equos … ne currere possint nec frenis au-
dire possint nec se mo(v)ere possint set cadant frangant
dis[f]rangantur, et agitantes … vertant nec lora teneant nec ag-
itare possint nec retinere equos possint nec ante se nec adver-
sarios suos videant nec vincant vertant».
DT nos. 275-83 [this text no. 275] + AE 1907: 68-69 =
TREMEL 2004 nos. 25-33 and 49
«Inhibit, weigh down the horses … so that they may not race
nor obey the reins nor get moving, but let them tumble, crash,
come to grief, and let the drivers … fail, lose their grip on the
reins, let them not be able to steer or control the horses or see
(what is happening) in front, or their opponents – may they not
win, may they fail».
DT no. 83 = TREMEL 2004, no. 33 offers:
«Alligate et obligate equos … ne c[ur]rere p[ossint] nec frenis
audir]e possint [nec se] mo(v)ere possint, cadant, frangant di-
siungantur male girent et agitantes … vertant nec lo[ra] teneant
nec ante se vider[e possint] n[ec] adversario[s suos sed [v]er-
tant frang[a]nt palma(m) vincere non possint (1.26ff.)»
«Constrict, inhibit the horses … so they may not race or obey
the reins or get moving, let them tumble, crash, come to grief,
do badly, and let the drivers … fail, lose grip of the reins, not
see (what is happening) in front, or their opponents but fail,
crash – let them not win the race!»
The limited series at Hadrumetum addressed to the daemon Sar-
basmisarab is even more schematic:
«cadan(t), frangan(t), disiungantur, male guren(t), palma(m)
vincere non possin(t)».
DT nos. 272-74 = TREMEL 2004 nos.22-24
A tight focus upon essentials is a characteristic rhetorical device
of malign curses. ‘Essentials’ here however are invariably social-
ly-constructed – the implicit schemes that pattern curses also draw
their authority from pre-existing representional matrices 95. As we
have seen, in the Roman period, imperial as well as Republican,
chariot-racing came to occupy a major place in the cultural self-
representation of Rome – one has only to think of the ecphrastic
ject was presumably to increase the excitement by forcing the chariots nearer to
the spectators and bunch closer to one another: FAUQUET 2008, p. 266.
95
BERGMANN 2008, p. 371 urges the importance of personal memory in recogni-
tion of visual representations; I would see stereotypes, whether visual or literary,
as prompts which themselves organize and condition ‘memories’.
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FIXING THE RACE: MANAGING RISKS IN THE NORTH AFRICAN CIRCUS 47

after its restoration by Augustus as ejn toi
ı pavnu kaloi
ı kai;

encomium by Dionysius of Halicarnassus of the Circus Maximus LATIN LITERARY Verg, Ov., Manil., Stat., Sil., Sidon, Luxorius,

qaumastoi
ı kataskeuavsmasi th
ı povlewı – and that even be-

Georg. Am. Astron. Theb. Punica Carmina Carmina


TEXTS
3,100- 3.2 5, 73-90 6,389- 16, 312-23, 304-
INCIDENTS 
12/Aen. 530 456 427
5,835 s.
fore the partial re-modellings in the later Flavian period and un-
der Trajan 96. In this case two prior schemes were available: dis- Inside the carceres/ • •• • • • •
cursive accounts of chariot-racing in literature, and a variety of at the start
iconographic conventions in different media. Each of these modes Dust rising • ••• • •
of representation existed in a dynamic but unstable relation to Agitator leans
forward • •• • • • •
the experience of innumerable actual events in the circus, with all
Driver needs • •• •§301,331
their organizational and contingent-historical differences. strength/manlinesss
Horses need heart • •
Literary schemes and intelligence
The locus classicus for narratives of chariot-races is of course the Too fast early on • • •
account by Homer of the funeral games for Patroklos (Il. 23.362-
Subjective feelings • • ••
538), prefaced by Nestor’s speech (305-48). Virtually all of the of driver/horses
stereotyped elements found in later representations can be found Navigating the
here. We may thus compare the prominent Homeric themes with metae • •• • • • • •§323
those of Table 3 below: named charioteers; intelligence required Cutting in • • ••
of drivers; steering skills; navigating the turning-post (all in Other obstructive • • • •
Nestor’s speech); starting out; dust rising; dropping the whip; driv- tactics
er thrown from chariot; chariots colliding; reins slipping from Importance of • • ••
hands; crash; humiliation of defeated driver (in the description of eyesight for men
the race itself) 97. and horses
The only other significant narrative model for the Latin literary Crash •• • • •§322
tradition seems to be the speech of the Paidagogos in Sophocles, Cadere or other • • • •§319,322
Electra 680-763 (Orestes’ purported death at the Delphic games), word for falling out
which increased the degree of theatricality by introducing the mul- Driver drops whip/
tiple crash, the broken axle and the driver dragged helpless along reins • •
the track by the reins 98. As far as I know, however, it is unique in Horses failing • •
describing a death 99. Other analogous ekphraseis in Hellenistic The word palma • • • • •§323
literature are lost, but we can infer their existence from Ennius’ Individual drivers • • • •§288,301,
comparison between chariots and naval vessels 100, and Vergil’s and horses named 319,323 etc
thumb-nail imitation of Homer in his account of foal-racing in Complaints at
Georgics III and his substitution of a naval race for a chariot-race losing •§301
in the games in honour of Anchises in Aeneid V 101. Humiliation for
The items listed in Table 3 are the major components of a long- driver •
term cultural representation of chariot-racing, partly established Table 3. Individualized sub-themes in literary representations of circus races in Latin.
already in Homer, partly adapted to Roman circumstances 102, but
essentially autonomous in its ability to expand and modify the con- ary, to create specialized narratives, such as those we find in the
stituent elements (we need only compare Ovid’s brilliant trifling defixiones, but also, I would claim, spectators’ perceptions of ac-
with the constituent tropes, or even Luxorius’ epigrams 103, with tual races – given that more than half of them could only see what
Silius Italicus’ ponderous efforts at elevated writing). This repre- was going on less than half the time, and that the dust and dis-
sentation acted as a template, organizing and mediating not mere- tance between track and the higher levels of the cavea made it dif-
ly other attempts, which we might a trifle unfairly call sub-liter- ficult to make out what was going on. The collective representa-

96
Dion. Hal., Ant., 3,68,1-4, cf. Res Gestae 19,1. The work seems to have been
carried out between 30 and 7 BCE. Claudius had the carceres constructed of mar-
ble and gilded metal: Suet., Claud. 21,1-3. For recent prospection work on the
Circus, see the summaries by CIANCIO ROSSETTO 1999 and 2008; Trajan: KNELL
2010, pp. 71-75. An impressive digital reconstruction in VERGNIEUX 2008, pp. 238-
39.
97
I have not included the quarrelling of the spectators in the Table, to which Homer
devotes considerable attention, but it does occur (in modified forms) later. Since
I am not proposing to use these accounts as ‘sources’ for reconstructing Realien
(one might object, for example, to using Statius or Sidonius Apollinaris to re-
construct circus-racing in the west during the High Empire, the first because he
purports to describe the ‘first’ Nemean Games, cf. THUILLIER 1996; the second
because he purports to describe a race in Rome under Valentinian III), I take them
all together as exemplifying a topos.
98
The broken axle is picked up for example by Apollonius Rhodius, Arg. 1,752-
58 (Pelops and Oenomaus). We find the theme of the charioteer falling into the
dust already in Theognis (2) 1251 s., cf. Isocr., Demon. 32; the danger of the turn-
ing-post: Aristoph., Pax 904. The earliest known representations of a crash-scene
occur on Attic vases of the second quarter of VIa, whence the type spread to Etruria
and then to Magna Graecia: SCHAUENBURG 1995, p. 39.
99
In Statius, however, both Hippodamus and Polynices are nearly killed – the first
because his Thessalian horses are tempted to eat him after he crashes.
100
Enn., Ann. 463 s. with O. SKUTSCH ad loc.
101
On the motif in the Georgics, cf. NELIS 2008; chariots/ships: WILLCOCK 1988;
FELDHERR 1995. References to charioteers in extant Greek literature of the Hel-
lenistic period and the High Empire are heavily dominated by routine exploita-
tion of the Phaedrus-motif.
102
For example, Statius and Silius Italicus, who purport to be describing ancient
races, try, when they remember, to avoid mentioning spina, mappa and pulvinar;
Silius Italicus however simply cannot imagine how they started without carceres
(16,315).
103
On the potential interest of Luxorius’ epigrams for this topic, despite their late
date, see LAVILLE 1974 and esp. STEVENS 1988.
06 Gordon (35-62):Layout 1 31-07-2012 9:01 Pagina 48
48
tion mediated expectations, interpretations and judgements of
what there was to see.
Just like our Carthaginian texts, the literary representation con-
sidered horses as well as drivers. A repeated stereotype is the dash
out of the starting-gates, always at least as fast as the wind; here
the dust from the track is mentioned, which anticipates the lat-
er theme of not being able to see properly what is going on. As
illustrations of the theme of horses’ intelligence, Pliny the Elder
cites a case where the charioteer fell backwards from his chari-
ot as the horses started out of the carceres at the Secular games
of 47 CE, but the team galloped gamely on, overtaking all the
competitors, and stopped dead before the finishing line «cum pud-
eret hominum artem ab equis vinci» 104. At least from Flavian pe-
riod it became usual to imagine the horses’ feelings and tem-
perament, describe their eager stamping and whinnying before
the race and their thundering dash along the track 105. Another
stereotype was the dwindling strength of the horses that fail to
win 106. From Manilius to the Flavians, the texts dwell on the ob-
structive tactics after the passing of the linea alba, and every sin-
gle text mentions the danger of navigating the metae 107. All these
literary themes feed into the curses targeted against the horses:
against their mettle and spirit, against their physical strength,
against getting out of the carceres, reaching the linea alba, start-
ing the cutting-in, and then reaching the first meta. Similarly with
the agitatores 108: the stereotype has them lean right forward as
the race starts, holding the reins with one hand and plying the
lash with the other; they also need strength and dexterity to man-
age their teams, must be able to see what is going on, take quick
decisions, show intelligence and the courage to win 109. All these
requirements are targeted by the North African curse-texts: don’t
let them start, cause them to fumble the reins, get the lash twist-
ed, interfere with their movements and their thinking, obstruct
their view. Other shared features are the attention paid to nam-
ing horses and drivers – a practice that starts, so far as our liter-
ary texts in Latin are concerned, in the Flavian period – the mo-
tif of falling out of the chariot 110 and the humiliation caused by
an ignominious crash or losing one’s whip.
So far from being naïve ideas about chariot-racing taken from per-
sonal experience, then, the details of the quasi-narratives of the
104
Plin. Nat. 8, 160. He also cites two other incidents, one in which a driverless
chariot at the Ludi plebeii dashed up onto the Capitol; another, evidently ben trova-
to, in which a driverless team careered from Veii to Rome.
105
Pliny mentions that horses intended for the circus had to be four years old be-
fore being raced («non ante quinquennes ibi certamen accipit» Nat. 8, 162).
JUNKELMANN 2000a, p. 107 reckons that the average speed of racing-chariots in
antiquity was around 35 kph, which would have meant an average race-time of 8-
9 minutes, up to 11 mins 45 secs in the Circus Maximus.
106
Juvenal mentions the downside of such failure – horses that do not win soon
get sold off: Sat. 8, 56-67.
107
THUILLIER 2008, p. 460. He also remarks (p. 463) on the apparent increase in
technical knowledge of the circus on the part of Ip writers.
108
The term auriga is not found in the circus epigraphy at Rome until the late IVp
(CIL VI 10066 = ILS 5303 = ICUR 24905), and occurs only in Hispania and Africa.
The tabella columbaria of the familia quadrigaria of T. Ateius Capito (CIL VI 10046
= ILS 5313, cited in full below), where the term aurigator is found, lists the agi-
tatores after the vilicus, the senior groom and the senior clerk; the aurigatores are
only named later, and must be considered rather as stable-lads who helped train
the teams, cf. CIL VI 3052 = ILMusNapoli 1: 643; also THUILLIER 1987. At any
rate by the second century, the star agitator of each faction seems to have been
called agitator primus factionis: CIL XIV 2884 (Praeneste).
109
Luxorius‘ praise of the grace of fine driving (§323) contrasts with his scorn for
the incompetent Egyptian charioteer: STEVENS 1988, pp. 160; 165.
RICHARD GORDON
North African circus curses show every sign of being taken prox-
imately from a set of long-lived but adaptable stereotypes that is
for us best represented by descriptions of chariot-races in liter-
ary texts. I maintain that the curses would not take the form they
do in the absence of such templates for organizing and repro-
ducing the complex and variable experience of attending chari-
ot-races in another medium. In one or two cases, indeed, it is very
probable that a curse-motif is actually literary in origin. Statius,
Theb. 6, 495-502 for example introduces a unique detail, where-
by Apollo sends a (spectral) monster, «anguicomam monstri ef-
figiem, saeuissima uisu / ora» (495 s.) to terrify Arion, the in-
troiugus (lead-horse) of Polynices. So far as I know, this motif oc-
curs nowhere else, even in Sidonius Apollinaris; but something
similar can be found in one of the late-antique circus-texts from
Apamea, which demands that the horses be terrified by the sight
of «spirits of the untimely dead, spirits of those killed by violence,
and the Fire of Hephaistos» 111.
Iconographic schemes
The literary texts employ an established inventory of themes, care-
fully arranged to convey a particular impression of the experi-
ence of attending a circus-race. No doubt in reality there were
many events, especially in smaller circuses, without significant
mishaps – the lists of victories by famous agitatores such as Flav-
ius Scorpus, Euprepes, C. Appuleius Diocles, Pompeius Mus-
closus, Pontius Epaphroditus or M. Aur. Liber imply as much 112
– but in extended literary representations there is always a crash,
some driver always drops his whip or loses his reins, some char-
iots always swerve too far out, the dust gets in everyone’s eyes
… 113 The narratives depend upon such incidents for their effects
of variety. A parallel ‘emotive syncopation’ is to be found in vi-
sual images.
The cultural role of chariot-racing in the High Empire and Late
Antiquity is attested in all sorts of media, on coins, contorniates,
appliqué medallions, gems, glass vessels, terra-sigillata, mass-pro-
duced lamps, gaming counters, even knife-handles 114. For my
purpose here it is enough to focus on two main types of image:
‘bird’s eye’ views of races, which mainly survive in mosaics, and
‘winning-post’ images, which are confined to reliefs. Both offer
110
Oddly enough the word cadere, which functions as a kind of refrain at
Hadrumetum, is attested only as late as Luxorius §319.6; 322.5 s. (et resurgit!).
But there are many other words for falling out, e.g. ruere, abriperi, volveri, eiec-
tari, deturbari etc.
111
SEG 34: 1437 = TREMEL 2004, p. 108 no. 17 ll.7 s. ‘Lemnian fire’ was a fa-
mously uncanny phenomenon – and one so literary that nobody quite knew what
it might be (cf. BURKERT 2011, 191-93). Tertullian of course harps on the kill-joy
(‘Christian’) claim that the circus games were anyway inventions of the Devil: «non
vident mappam quid sit; mappam putant, sed est diaboli ab alto praecipitati figura»
(De spect. 16, 3); cf. DÖLGER 1929a, pp. 212 s.
112
Diocles, who totted up 4,257 starts over a period of 24 years (i.e. more than
177 per annum) between 122 and 146 CE, must have raced at least five times a
day when the ludi were on, have taken part in at least a quarter of all the big races
in Rome and have won more than one third of these: HORSMANN 1998, pp. 161 s.
113
MEIJER 2010, p. 77 remarks on the number of recipes for eye-salves in the Hip-
piatrika, assuming many injuries to have been caused by whip-lash.
114
Cf. CAMERON 1973, p. 21; in greater detail: LANDES 2008. On the paving of the
peristyle of the Templa Concordiae at Dougga in North Africa someone has drawn
a rough representation of a circus seen from above, more or less circular, show-
ing the interior walls of the cavea, and, on the outer rim, the porta pompae with
the carceres (IVp): MAURIN 2008, p. 103 with fig. 17. Such a representation clear-
ly implies acquaintance with the iconographic convention of the bird’s-eye view
(see below).
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FIXING THE RACE: MANAGING RISKS IN THE NORTH AFRICAN CIRCUS
primarily synoptic narratives, meaning that heavily-selected
‘characteristic’ events or incidents from different moments in the
unfolding of a race are represented as though they were occur-
ring simultaneously; mosaics and frescoes naturally offered more
scope here than reliefs, most of which adorn the front of chil-
dren’s sarcophagi. Bettina Bergmann has recently commented on
how bird’s-eye views combine architectural details of the circus
(the carceres, the monuments on the spina, sometimes the arcades
in the elevation of the exterior walls of the cavea) with conven-
tional highlights of the race, such as overtaking, rounding the
metae, and more or less spectacular crashes, and then again the
socially and financially important moments after the race: the
victory procession, the congratulations of the editor ludorum as
he brings the prize-money, sometimes even a group of claque-
urs accompanying the horses to the stables 115. Even more than
literary descriptions, such designs, usually in the form of large
floor-mosaics, permitted the juxtaposition of radically different
viewpoints and experiential moments. Depending on the inter-
ests and motives of the patron (many such images, especially in
IVp, seem to have been commissioned by members of local élites
themselves responsible for staging games, or by stable-owners),
any selection of these features might be stressed at the expense
of others 116. One motif, the victorious charioteer, was so favoured
that an entire sub-genre developed around it, mainly in mosaic,
which spread widely throughout the western Mediterranean, es-
pecially in North Africa, Italy (Rome), Hispania and Germania
Superior: the victor is manifested alone or along with members
of the other factions, with one horse, or with a team – halted,
walking or galloping, gazing at the implied spectator, or stand-
ing still to crown himself 117. The defixiones, we may say, repre-
sent the inverted complement of such public acclamation, a con-
cealed but vigorously active netherworld beneath all this tri-
umphalism.
If we take first a ‘bird’s-eye’ race-images in mosaic, we find vi-
sual stereotypes closely analogous to the literary, but adjusted to
the specific strengths and weaknesses of iconographic commu-
nication 118. For example, on the well-known floor-mosaic in Ly-
on (c. 225 CE), discovered in 1806 (Fig. 6), we find eight chari-
ots, four ‘below’ the spina (from l.: Green, Red, White, Blue),
four above (from r.: Red, Blue, Green, White), a nominal bina
115
BERGMANN 2008, pp. 264-78. On such late-antique architectural representa-
tions, see BILLIG 1977; at Trier, HUPE 2007. For a probably misguided attempt to
use the Carthaginian mosaics to reconstruct the actual circus, see GOLVIN, FAU-
QUET 2003 with MAURIN 2008, p. 106; on the general problems of digital recon-
structions, GOLVIN 2008a.
116
GABELMANN 1980; cf. RODENWALT 1940 (starting from the Vatican funerary re-
lief from Ostia, inv. No. 9556, his plate I).
117
DUNBABIN 1982 offers a thorough analysis of this genre and its numerous va-
rieties. In the catalogue, she lists five examples from Carthage (p.87 nos. 2-6) but
none from Hadrumetum. The earlier survey by SALOMONSON 1965, starting with
the mosaic from the Casa dei cavalli in Carthage, is also useful. The convention-
ality of these representations is evident, among other details, from the fact that
they only show quadrigae, never singulae, bigae or larger spans than four.
118
For remarks on the playful paradoxes implied in reducing the circus to a floor-
mosaic inside a building, see BERGMANN 2008, 375. It must however be remem-
bered that even in North Africa the incidence of circus mosaics is very variable:
at El Djem, for example, where there was a monumnetal circus, there is not a sin-
gle such design among dozens of mosaic floors: MAURIN 2008, p. 105.
119
See e.g. HUMPHREY 1986, pp. 216-19; FAUQUET 2008, pp. 266 s. with fig. 6;
MARCHET 2008, pp. 293-95 with fig. 2; BERGMANN 2008, p. 370 with fig. 10. The
mosaic was removed from its find-spot in 1818, and restored in Paris by Belloni.
120
In the list of functions in the familia quadrigaria of T. Ateius Capito at Rome
49
Fig. 6. Nineteenth-century copy of the circus-mosaic found in 1806 in Lyon. Musée
de la Civilisation Gallo-Romaine, Lyon.
therefore 119. All the chariots appear to be circling the spina an-
ti-clockwise; the horses’ forward leaps suggest headlong speed
and thoroughbred temperament. An analogy to the drama cre-
ated in the literary sources by staging duels between named driv-
ers and named introiugi, and reaching a dénouement at the fin-
ishing-line, is here provided by individual sub-scenes: at the top,
a Green team, urged on by a mounted hortator, is just ahead of
the Blues, at the bottom, the White team is just crossing the fin-
ishing-line inside of the Reds. The narrative control offered by
literary tropes is supplied here by the aesthetic chiasmus between
the two crashed teams at the bottom left (Green) and top right
(Red), and the two teams just starting to turn the metae (bottom
right [Blue] and top left [White]). At the same time, the figure
re-affirms visually the stereotyped association between turning
the metae and coming to grief. ‘Realistic’ details that never ap-
pear either in the literary accounts or in the defixiones, are the
two mounted hortatores, one below, one above, a couple of un-
mounted men, one a sparsor 120, the other (with a whip) a con-
troller, and, on the extreme left, the editor ludorum with his en-
tourage on the balcony above the porta pompae. A jot of local
colour is provided by an injured Blue driver supine in front of
the porta. Similar analyses of other floor-mosaic designs, some
simpler, some more complex, such as that in the Villa Silin near
Lepcis, could easily be made 121.
It is however the relief images, in fresco, stucco, terracotta and
marble, that perhaps best convey the stereotyped quality of cir-
cus-representations 122. As I have pointed out, many of them are
(CIL VI 10046 = ILS 5313) this word is spelled spartor.
121
Images of the Silin mosaic can be found via Google images; see also BERGMANN
2008, p. 375 with figs. 13- 14a, b. The most elaborate mosaic of this type is that
in the late-antique villa at Piazza Armerina in central Sicily; for a colour photo,
cf. FAUQUET 2008, p. 263 fig. 3; b/w drawing: GOLVIN 2008b, p. 85 fig. 3. Some
of the later circus-mosaics, such as those from Casa de la Condesa de Sobradiel
and the villa at Bell-lloch (both now in the Archaeological Museum of Barcelona),
and the Eros-mosaic in Dougga, just like some literary accounts, name the agita-
tores and either all four horses (Sobradiel) or just the introiugi (Bell-lloch); for im-
ages see BERGMANN 2008, p. 368 fig.9 (Sobradiel) and p. 382 figs. 20a, b (Bell-
lloch); Dougga: CAMERON 1973, p. 21 and fig. 25. A circus-scene added to the
back of a Phaethon-sarcophagus in the Uffizi likewise names drivers and horses:
ASR III.3, p. 342 = KOCH-SICHTERMANN 1982, p. 124.
122
The complex funerary relief from Foligno, the so-called Vatican-Berlin sar-
cophagus, and no doubt the Maffei circus-relief (MATZ-DUHN 1882, no. 2246),
represent a sort of compromise between mosaic and relief, attempting to combine
the advantages of each, cf. GOLVIN 2008b, p. 85 figs. 1 (Vatican-Berlin) and 2
(Foligno); RODENWALT 1940, p. 27 fig. 9 = FAUQUET 2008, p. 282 fig. 20 (Folig-
no); RODENWALT 1940, p. 29 figs. 10, 11 (two versions of the fragmentary Maffei
relief, which also, like Foligno, represented the spectators in the cavea). The sheer
number of separate events on the first two of these reliefs successfully conveys the
impression of mass action but at the price of indecipherable confusion.
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50 RICHARD GORDON

Fig. 7. Approaching the three columns of the meta, with the introiugus, recognizable from his raised head,
preparing to slow. Note the free-riding hortator just in front. Terracotta plaque, Ip (first half). British Muse-
um, London, inv. no. GR 1805.7-3.337.

Fig. 8. Erotes sarcophagus: Synoptic scene including (from r.): rounding the meta, a crash, the winner gauging the pursuit, running down the near straight. Marble,
c.140 CE. Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. no. MA 1640.

Fig. 9. Erotes sarcophagus (r. half). Similar synoptic scene, with a more spectacular crash. Note the fallen
sparsor crouching beneath the leading horses, and the dismayed hortator in front of the crashed team. Mar-
ble, possibly from tomb of Licinii, Rome. Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, inv. no. I.N. 850-851.
06 Gordon (35-62):Layout 1 31-07-2012 9:01 Pagina 51
FIXING THE RACE: MANAGING RISKS IN THE NORTH AFRICAN CIRCUS
‘winning-post’ images, that is, their imagined or ideal view-point
is roughly the second white line (creta), where the judges’ tribu-
nal was located and which served as the winning post 123. But in
fact they represent a no less idealized and selective interpretation
of what was to be experienced in the circus than the ‘bird’s-eye’
mosaics, as is made clear by the convention of representing the
drivers as Erotes (Amores) in bigae,which is found already in the
stucco decoration of the men’s frigidarium of the Forum baths at
Pompeii 124, but most especially in the numerous Erotes-sar-
cophagi from Rome and its neighbourhood 125.
One gain of the relief-convention was the possibility of directing
the viewer’s gaze towards selected critical events, such as round-
ing the first meta, and the immediacy with which such dramatized
events could be communicated (Fig. 7) 126. Shifting scales could
be used ‘expressionistically’ to communicate desired emphases;
in this plaque, the towers of the metae, though far more formi-
dable than they appear in mosaics, and absolutely required to con-
textualize the implied narrative, have been reduced in relative size
so as to emphasize the intended focus, the four horses of the team.
At the same time, details such as the angle of the introiugus’ head
could be used indexically to suggest the type of communication
the literary texts convey by having named charioteers talk to their
introiugus.
The most significant group of ‘winning-post’ images however are
the Erotes-sarcophagi, a type developed in Rome c. 100 CE and
especially popular for children’s tombs in the second half of IIp 127.
In view of earlier treatments of Erotes in chariots or carts drawn
by a variety of birds and animals, for example in the House of the
Vettii at Pompeii 128, these have been viewed as parodies of cir-
cus-races, or as allegories; for my purposes, however, they may
serve as indirect reflections of the cultural importance of the cir-
cus specialized in a particular medium, the sarcophagus front
(and/or lid) 129. A simple example (Fig. 8) includes four bigae be-
tween the metae; in the centre, accentuated by the obelisk, is the
winner, glancing back at a pursuer; on the extreme right the turn-
ing of the first meta is registered. The danger associated with this
manoeuvre is represented graphically by the crash, which in re-
ality would normally occur, if at all, on the far (invisible) side of
the spina 130. A more complex conception (Fig. 9) denotes the win-
ner by making him look out of the picture-plane towards the spec-
tator, as in many victor-images, and locating the extended arm of
the hortator so as to confirm this inference 131. Beneath the hors-
123
I am thinking here mainly of the Erotes-sarcophagi, which, as we shall see, col-
lapse a number of different imagined events into the space on the ‘outward’ stretch
of the course on either side of the winning-post.
124
BLANC-GURY 1986, p. 1001 no. 385 (early Flavian). This scene shows six teams
and four riders, who are either hortatores or acrobatic performers in the circus,
of the kind described by Manilius, Astr. 5, 85-89.
125
Cf. TURCAN-DELÉANI 1964; RUMPF 1966, cc. 327 s.; VOGEL 1969. There are
however one or two cases in which quadrigae are shown, e.g. CALZA 1977, pp.
207 s. no. 239 fig. 141.
126
Of course the first meta was a good distance away from the creta (see Fig. 5
above); this plaque was however part of a larger group, of which a crash also sur-
vives (Fig. 10 here), which was thematically related to the Erotes-sarcophagi, al-
beit earlier in date.
127
See the excellent treatment by SCHAUENBURG 1995; also KOCH-SICHTERMANN
1982, pp. 311-13; BELL 2004 (non vidi). Schauenburg catalogues 124 examples
(1995, pp. 61-91) plus seven doubtfuls and fourteen ‘Erotes in chariots’ (pp. 94-
96). Despite its title, DIMAS 1998 adds nothing to SCHAUENBURG or even KOCH -
SICHTERMANN. There are occasional provincial examples, such as the late-IIIp child’s
sarcophagus in Mainz: BELTING-IHM 1961.
51
Fig. 10. Severe crash after turning the meta, with the team broken up and the
driver fallen backwards onto the circuit. Note the dismay of the hippolatês, run-
ning up to help. Terracotta plaque (same series as Fig. 2). Antikensammlung, Kun-
sthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Inv. AS V 49.
es of this biga we see what must have been one of the major caus-
es of accidents (and injuries), a sparsor, whose dangerous job it
was to throw water over the chariot-axles during the race as prim-
itive lubrication to prevent them over-heating 132. Juxtaposed
against the winner is a crash, with the chariot piled on top of the
horses and the driver hurled backwards out of it. Both of these
sarcophagi, and this is characteristic of these images, link the idea
of victory visually with that of wreckage and failure. It is this link-
age in the imaginaire of the circus, I think, that the curses exploit
for their negative ends. A more detailed crash, this time a quadri-
ga that has come to grief on the meta, with two injured horses and
two others rearing in panic, is represented alone on a second ter-
racotta plaque (Fig. 10); two hippolatai run up to clear the wreck-
age off the course to avoid further accidents. The driver, his hand
still caught up in the reins, lies motionless behind the chariot 133.
Once again, it is the production by the imaginaire of this type of
conventionalized image, centred upon the naufragium, and fa-
miliarized through their dispersion in the minor arts, that under-
pins the curses’ fixation upon destruction and failure in the
race 134.
128
E.g. BLANC-GURY 1986, p. 1001 nos. 387-390. SCHAUENBURG 1995, pp. 99-102
catalogues seventeen Attic sarcophagi showing Erotes with animals other than hors-
es (nos. 147-164).
129
HUMPHREY 1986, pp. 201 s. argues against any sort of symbolic reading. It is
however hard not to see the frescoes at any rate as playful parodies, cf. RUMPF
1966, c. 328; DUNBABIN 1982, p. 67 with n.12. SCHAUENBURG 1995, pp. 43-48, if
I understand him aright, inclines to read the genre as connoting the idea ‘chil-
dren’s lives are happy (even if in this case short)’.
130
See the sketch of the ‘accident black-spots’ in FAUQUET 2008, p. 272 fig. 10,
with p. 271. An aurigator/hippolatês runs up behind the driver to help remove the
horses and clear away the damaged chariot.
131
See the description in SCHAUENBURG 1995, p. 65, cat. no. 19.
132
There is a sparsor beneath the other two chariots, further to the left off this
picture, both of whose drivers are looking behind them.
133
CIL VI, 10078 is the funerary of a young charioteer who fell backwards out of
his chariot and was killed.
134
On the role of the minor arts in the dissemination of these circus images, see
DUNBABIN 1982, p. 69; SCHAUENBURG 1995, p. 39.
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52
MINIMIZING INVESTMENT RISKS
The circus as a complex decentralized institution
With the monumentalized arena – the Circus Maximus in Rome
and its imitations –, the innumerable temporary campi, and the
readiness of city élites not merely to mount such competitions but
to defray the immense costs of such monumentalization 135, cir-
cus-racing, like gladiatorial shows, became one of the major de-
centralized institutions of the imperial Roman world. Horses
needed to be bred, maintained for four years before they could
even race, if necessary be imported by ship from distant provinces,
such as Hispania, Africa and Phrygia, and then trained for this
special function 136. Charioteers needed likewise to be bought and
trained (itself a long-term commitment), the best ones freed (no
doubt as Junian Latins so that, when they were killed or died, their
estates would revert to their former masters); numerous person-
nel, mainly slaves, were required as trainers, horse-leeches,
grooms, stable-lads (hippolatai), starting-gate openers, unspecified
helpers (in Greek bohqoiv), chariot-builders and so on 137. At Rome
during the High Empire, the editores ludorum – annual magistrates
of varying status but also the emperors themselves 138 – had to ne-
gotiate with the equestrian domini factionum over costs and stag-
ing of their games, with the emperors tending to press for rising
numbers of annual spectacles 139, and the domini able more or less
to dictate their own terms 140. Elsewhere, their financing, though
naturally on a smaller scale, was a major drain on the resources
of annual magistrates 141. The costs were further increased by the
customary requirement to provide a wider range of entertainment
than merely chariot-racing and equestrian acrobatics 142.
135
As DUNCAN-JONES 1963, pp. 85 s. points out, the monumentalization of cir-
cuses was far more expensive than e.g. building a theatre; cf. PINTOZZI - NORMAN
1992, 11. For that reason, they tended to be built much later than these other
civic amenities, which in turn explains the continuing predominance of campi: FLO-
RIANI SQUARCIAPINO 1979, p. 277 (on North Africa, where some at least were cre-
ated on large estates).
136
At any rate in late antiquity, when the emperors controlled most herds, Span-
ish horses were imported by private agonothetes to the East: Amm. Marc. 20,8,13;
Zonaras 13,10,18. In the High Empire, all this was done by professional breed-
ers and managers, and we therefore know no details. Basing himself on the Cir-
cus Maximus, JUNKELMANN 2000a, p. 104 calculates that 1152 horses would have
been required each day, assuming a) 24 races during each day of the ludi; b) all
races were ternae (i.e. each faction mounted three teams); c) all races were run by
quadrigae; d) no horses ran more than once a day. As he points out, however, many
races were singulae and binae (i.e. only one or two teams per faction), and run by
bigae and trigae, which would reduce this total to perhaps 700-800; on the other
hand, the hortatores were all mounted. Provincial circuses offered many fewer
races.
137
Cf. NELIS CLÉMENT 2002. There is an important group of more than one hun-
dred fourth-century ostraka from Oxyrhynchus (O Ashm Shelton nos. 83-190) that
record the differential daily wine-rations issued to the circus-personnel during race-
meetings at festivals (DECKER 2008, pp. 352 s.). They include the functions listed
here, also a donkey-driver. It is not certain whether, as Decker argues, the list re-
flects IVp Roman practice; but it can be taken as a rough index of the personnel
involved.
138
It is not known when ownership, or at least control over, the factions was tak-
en over by the imperial bureaucracy, which also controlled the traffic in horses,
but this was certainly the case by IVp: CAMERON 1976, p. 7. He believes that the
factions came somewhat earlier to be directed by the senior agitator, though the
evidence for this conclusion seems to me rather thin.
139
Nero for example increased the number of prizes, so that the races lasted all
day: Cass. Dio 55,10. Moreover, after an incident in which an editor tried to cheat
the charioteers out of their prizes, he ordered the money to be paid out in cash
immediately after each race: Suet., Nero 5.
140
After Nero increased the number of prizes, the domini refused to hire out their
teams for less than a whole day, which naturally increased the costs that the edi-
tores had to budget for: Suet., Nero 22.
RICHARD GORDON
Despite the high degree of institutionalization, our knowledge
even of the situation in Rome is extremely limited: the major type
of evidence, inscriptions of various kinds, is simply inadequate to
answer even basic questions regarding organization 143. My con-
cern here however is simply to illustrate something of the com-
plexity of the circus business in the capital, on the assumption
that the situation in Carthage and Hadrumetum was analogous,
if on a smaller scale 144.
One aspect is the organization implied not merely by the fre-
quency of ludi but by the number of different types of races,
each requiring its own specialized equipment and training-
schedules. A good example is the text of the complex monu-
ment on the Via Flaminia, now lost, set up by P. Aelius Gutta
Calpurnianus 145:
Text 1:
«P. Aelius Mari Rogati fil(ius), Gutta Calpurnianus equis his
vici in factione veneta: Germinatore n(igro) af(ro) LXXXXII,
Silvano r(ufo) af(ro) CV, Nitid(o) gil(vo) af(ro) LII, Saxone
n(igro) af(ro) LX, et vici praemia m(aiora) (quinquagenaria) I,
(quadragenaria) IX, (tricenaria) XVII».
Text 2:
«P. Aelius, Mari Rogati fil(ius), Gutta Calpurnianus mill[e] pal-
mas complevi in factione prasina equis his: Danao b(adio) af(ro)
XIX, Oceano n(igro) CCVIIII, Victore r(ufo) CCCCXXIX, Vin-
dice b(adio) CLVII, et vici praemia maiora (quadragenaria) III,
(tricenaria) III».
141
At Rome the number of days per annum allocated to the spectacles (mainly
circus) rose from 88 in Ip to 176 in IVp; on the politico-social significance of the
spectacles in the High Empire, see GROOT 2008, pp. 227-96; on the period from
the Late Republic to Nero, cf. BEACHAM 1999. In the provinces, the numbers of
ludi and the prizes were much lower than in Rome; but even in Rome, to judge
from their inconspicuous graves, the majority of charioteers remained slaves
obliged to give their winnings (if any) to their masters: HORSMANN 1998, pp. 160-
66. Others however were financially successful enough to acquire their own slaves.
142
E.g. (A. Clodius Flaccus) «ludos omnibus acuamatis pantomimisque omnibus»:
CIL X 1074d = ILS 5053, 14 (Pompeii); «ludionum quadr[igarum -3- et big]arum
binarum item desultorum cu[rsor]umque faction[m …»: AE 1932: 70 = 1935: 26 =
EpigrAnfitOccRom 1 (1988) no. 43; «spectaculum pugilum et aurigarum et ludo-
rum scaenicorum»: CIL VIII 11998 = ILS 5072 = AE 1941: 157 = AE 1999: 1755
(Siliana/Qasr al Hadid, Africa procos); «ludos circenses itemq(ue) epulonum et
sportulas»: ILTun 746 (Henchir Bou-Cha). DECKER 2008, pp. 354 s. summarizes
the programmes of spectacles in POxy 2707 (VIp) and PBingen 128 (c. 500p, prove-
nance unknown). The Oxyrhynchus list includes: First chariot race; procession;
tight-rope dancer and music; second race; tight-rope dancer and music; third race;
gazelle (hunting with) dogs; fourth race; actors (probably a mime or a play); fifth
race; athletes; sixth race.
143
For example, it is generally assumed that, since the Greens and Blues were the
dominant factions at Rome already in the Julio-Claudian period – apparently the
only ones to receive the favour of individual emperors –, they tended to co-oper-
ate with the Reds and Whites respectively; this was certainly the case at Con-
stantinople (CAMERON 1976, pp. 45-73). PAVIS D’ESCURAC 1987, p. 449 n.3, how-
ever, claims that at Rome the Whites were associated with the Greens and the
Reds with the Blues. As far as I know, there is no evidence to support this; it must
be an error based on a mis-reading of the well-known four-faction mosaic from
the Villa dei Severi at Baccano, now in the Palazzo Massimo (IIIp): in the upper
pair of scenes the Green agitator (l.) is shown alongside the Red (r.), and, in the
lower pair, the White (l.) alongside the Blue (r.). PAVIS D’ESCURAC 1987, seems to
have read the panels from top to bottom, which would indeed give Green + White,
Red + Blue.
144
I am not concerned here with the supporters of the factions, on which there is
a good deal of anecdotal information: CAMERON 1976, pp. 53 ss.
145
Gutta Calpurnianus is no. 94 in Horsmann’s prosopography (HORSMANN 1998,
pp. 226-28).
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FIXING THE RACE: MANAGING RISKS IN THE NORTH AFRICAN CIRCUS
Text 3:
«Ex numero palmarum supra scriptarum ∞CXXVI vici: In fac-
tione albata CII, remissus II, (tricenaria) I, (quadragenaria) I,
a pompa IIII, equorum anagonum I; singularum LXXXIII, bi-
narum VII, ternarum II. In factione russata vici LXXIIX, re-
missus semel, (tricenaria) I; singularum XLII, binarum XXXII,
ternarum III, quaternarum semel. In factione veneta vici
DLXXXIII, (tricenaria) XVII, seiuge I, (quadragenaria) VIIII,
(quinquagenaria) I, a pompa XXXV, trigas (decenaria) VII, tri-
ga (vigintiquingenaria) I, equorum anagonum I, sacro quin-
quennalis certaminis I, remissus semel; singularum CC-
CXXXIIII, binarum CLXXXIV, ternarum LXV. In factione
prasina vici CCCLXIV, (tricenaria) I, (quadragenaria) II, ped-
ibus ad quadrigam (sexagenaria) I, a pompa VI; singularum
CXVI, binarum CLXXXIIII, ternarum LXIIII. Hoc monu-
mentum vivus feci» 146.
Even if the meaning of some of the technical terms here remains
uncertain 147, the complexity of the institution of chariot-racing at
Rome, and the financial and logistic infrastructure that under-
pinned it, come across clearly, to say nothing of the investment
implied by the intensive breeding of high-quality horses 148. The
lengthy inscription by the Spaniard C. Appuleius Diocles could
be used to make the same point 149.
One of the problems raised by these two inscriptions is that both
Gutta and Diocles raced on numerous occasions for all four main
factions 150, yet the impression given by the great majority of fu-
neraries of agitatores at Rome is that they ran exclusively for one
or other faction 151. In these cases, it may often be that the funer-
aries simply record the faction that had engaged the individual at
the time of death, and that Junian Latins at any rate, unlike slaves,
146
CIL VI 10047 = ILS 5288. The texts are preserved only in the codex Einsiedlensis;
there were apparently originally several more inscriptions, in the process of copy-
ing which mistakes and confusions have arisen, so that the sums do not add up.
The name implies that, while a slave, he was bought by a P. Aelius from the fa-
milia of a (Marius) Calpurnius, and later freed because of his success. The un-
usual filiation implies that his biological father, though a slave when Gutta was
born, was himself later freed.
147
Dessau’s notes to ILS 5288 are invaluable here, just like his selection of texts
on this subject.
148
The original text advertises this technical complexity even more, because, where
I have spelled out the ordinal numbers, it simply gives the sigla for the corre-
sponding numerals. Note especially the number of races Gutta won driving one-
horse chariots (singulae), which virtually never appear in the visual record at this
period. For Gigas, a specialist in biga-racing, see CIL VI 33946 = ILS 5280. Horse-
breeding: Pliny mentions a dominus quadrigarum named Caecina, based in Volter-
ra, who presumably specialized in supplying teams to the factions (Nat. 10,71);
Tigellinus started his career providing horses for the Circus (Tac., Hist. 1,72). Gen-
erally speaking, only stallions were used for circus-racing, though occasionally one
encounters mares’ names.
149
CIL VI 10048 = ILS 5287 = AE 1957: 20 = 1967: 127 = 2006: 142 and 153,
with SABLAYROLLES 2008. Some other less impressive texts of this type are CIL VI
10050 = ILS 5285 (Crescens); 10051 = ILS 5283 (Scirtus), 37834, cf. 10063 = ILS
5281, 10060.
150
To a much smaller extent this is also the case with M. Aur. Polynices, who gained
739 victories, 12 for the Blues, 17 for the Whites, 55 for Greens and 653 for the
Reds (CIL VI 10049 = ILS 5286 = IG XIV 1474 = IGUR 1171, cf. SEG 30: 1204),
and Pompeius Musclosus, who gained in all 682 victories: 2 for the Blues, 3 for
the Whites, 5 for the Greens, and 672 for the Reds (CIL VI 10063 = ILS 5281).
151
The successful agitator Crescens drove only for the Blues during his career of
22 years (CIL VI 10050 = ILS 5285); ); an anonymous agitator likewise (CIL VI
10055 = 33938 = ILS 5284); Scirtus only for the Whites (CIL VI 10051 = ILS
5283). Also: «Hyla agitator panni Veneti vix(it) annos XXV biga pueril(i) vic(it)
VII quadr(iga) XXI revocat(us) III secundas XXXIX tertias XLI» (AE 1906: 106 =
CIL VI 37835 = ILS 9348, Rome).
53
were free to make driving contracts as they wished 152. This im-
pression is strengthened by the fact that imperial freedmen, who
are normally considered to have been closely bound to the service
either of the ‘civil service’ or the imperial palaces, might also be en-
gaged by individual factions 153. Again, although it is known that in
the High Empire the domini who controlled the factions possessed
stables and other property in or near the city 154, the epigraphic ev-
idence provides almost no insight into their internal organization.
Almost the only relevant evidence comes from an Augustan in-
scription recording the deaths of some members of a familia quadri-
garia owned by one T. Attius Capito, some of whom apparently de-
rived from a similar familia originally formed by Agrippa:
«Familiae quadrigariae T(iti) At(ti) Capitonis / Panni Cheli-
doni Chresto quaestore / ollae divisae decurionibus h{e}is q(ui)
i(n)f(ra) s(cripti) s(unt) / M(arco) Vipsanio Migioni / Docimo
vilico / Chresto conditori / Epaphrae sellario / Menandro agi-
tatori / Apollonio agitatori / Cerdoni agitatori / Liccaeo agita-
tori / Helleti succonditori / P(ublio) Quinctio Primo / Hyllo
medico / Anteroti tentori / Antiocho sutori / Parnaci tentori /
M(arco) Vipsanio Calamo / M(arco) Vipsanio Dareo // Eroti
tentori / M(arco) Vipsanio Fausto / Hilaro aurig(atori) / Nican-
dro aurig(atori) / Epigono aurig(atori) / Alexandro aurig(atori)
/ Nicephoro spartor(i) / Alexioni moratori / viatori» 155.
A related inscription, which records the deaths of five other lib-
ertine members of the familia of M. Vipsanius ~, lists some of the
same functions: tentor, aurigator, viator, succonditor, medicus 156.
Other texts supply a few further terms, such as hortator, cursor,
supra cursores, sarcinator and margaritarius 157. The closest analo-
gy is with the development of named specialisms (and jargon) in
152
Diocles himself is described in an inscription from Praeneste as «agitator primus
fact(ionis) russat(ae)»: CIL XIV 2884. Aurelius Heracles was both agitator fact(io-
nis) venet(ae) and trainer (doctor) to the same faction and the Greens: CIL VI
10057 = ILS 5298.
153
CIL VI 10061: «Tib. Claud. Aug. lib. Epaphrodito agitatori faction(is) prasinae
Anicetus agitator factionis eiusdem magistr(o) suo».
154
Domini: Suet., Nero 22; stables: Caius prasinae factioni ita addictus et deditus,

n stavsewn
ut cenaret in stabulo assidue et maneret: Suet., Caius 55,2. According to Josephus,
tou
peri; ejikeivnon [i.e. Eutychos, the agitator of the Greens, who was a favourite
AJ 19,4,4 §257 Caius used military labour to build ta;ı oijkodoma;ı tw
of Caius] iJppikou
. For what little is known of the organization at Rome, and the
control of the circus-factions by the emperors at least from the fourth century, see
CAMERON 1976, pp. 6-10.
155
CIL VI 10046 = ILS 5313. The fullest discussion of all these functions is NELIS-
CLÉMENT 2002; also the brief account in BELL 2006. I am not sure I understand l.
2 (Panni Chelidoni Chresto quaestore) correctly. On the analogy of e.g. CIL VI 10045
= ILS 5312: decurionibus et familiae panni russei, panni chelidoni ought to mean ‘of
the Green [or possibly Yellow; or even Blue; chelidon = ‘swallow’] faction’, which,
if the inference from the names M. Vipsanius is correct, might have been an early
or alternative name for the factio prasina; but in that case Chrestus, the clerk
(quaestor) of the familia-organisation, would have to be a slave. To judge from their
capitals, Dessau and Clauss-Slaby seem to have considered Panni Chelidoni Chresto
as the name of this person, in which case the reading would have to be Panni(o) or
Panni(co) - both of them names on the edge of non-existence, and certainly other-
wise unknown in Rome. I assume that some time after Agrippa’s death, the famil-
ia was bought up by Capito, and was later merged into one of the four factions
known to us from the Julio-Claudian period (it has however been argued that all
four colours existed from some early point in the Republic: CAMERON 1976, p. 59).
156
CIL VI 3052 = ILMusNapoli 1: 643, which is apparently arranged in the order
of the deaths; the doctor/horse-leech (medicus) worked for the factio veneta, prov-
ing that the Blues already existed at this time. For two men who were certainly
freed by Agrippa, see CIL VI 18269, cf. 8871.
157
Hortator: CIL VI 10076; cursor et supra cursores: 33945 = ILS 5309; sarcinator
and margaritarius (who presumably helped adorn the horses’ manes): CIL VI 3051.
06 Gordon (35-62):Layout 1 31-07-2012 9:01 Pagina 54
54
the arena, and, to a smaller extent, in the Greek games of the im-
perial period 158.
If little is known about organization in Rome, the case in North
Africa prior to the fourth century is positively obscure 159. The ex-
cavation of the circus at Carthage, which is now known to have
been built early in IIp and to have continued in use through much
of the Vandal period, and to have been the largest such construc-
tion outside Rome, has provided great quantities of finds but no
information directly relevant to the issue of organization 160. Al-
though the defixiones imply that the factions were sufficiently in-
stitutionalized to provide teams for the races themselves, their strict-
ly limited view-point prevents them from telling us anything else
about their organization, for example whether they owned prop-
erty or actually trained the charioteers and horses. The suggestion
by Ch. Picard that the ‘Casa dei cavalli’, excavated in the 1920s,
may have been the main building of the Blues is now generally dis-
credited, and anyway the building is too late for my purposes 161.
Only the elaborate tomb of a charioteer complete with fine-quali-
ty marble statues of himself and his female partner from the Yas-
mina necropolis just south of the Circus, dated to the first half of
IIIp, gives an impression of the wealth some of these individuals,
nominally subject to infamia under the Edict, could accumulate 162.
Nevertheless, although they are late-antique (the series only be-
gins after 300p), some inferences can perhaps be made through the
mosaics, at least thirteen of which come from Proconsularis and
five from Byzacena 163. In several of these, especially at Hadrume-
tum, the names of the owners appear beside the horses, and in
other cases the stable-mark 164. Similar marks are found on images
of circus-horses at Mérida in Spain and on the contorniates at
Rome 165. In Late-Roman Egypt, the estate of the Apion family at
Oxyrhynchus certainly supplied horses for the circus 166. The epi-
graphic evidence from the High Empire has always been taken to
imply that the teams for the races in non-monumentalized arenas
(campi), some of which were certainly on great estates, were pro-
vided by these wealthy land-owners 167. Jeremy Rossiter has sug-
gested that in the Late Roman period, but probably also earlier,
the horses and teams that raced in the circus at Carthage belonged
to wealthy estates on the outskirts of the city, which supplied them
158
See MOSCI SASSI 1992; NEWBY 2005; JUNKELMANN 2000b.
159
The claim by PINTOZZI - NORMAN 1992, p. 12 that «it has long been recog-
nized that the inscriptions on the [circus-] tablets preserve important information
about circus personnel and about how the circus factions operated» seems almost
comically inept.
160
See HUMPHREY 1986, pp. 296-306, and the essays in HUMPHREY 1988. The ex-
ternal dimensions are 570/580 x 129m; the arena itself was at least 496m long (ex-
tended by c. 15m in the Severan period by shifting the carceres); the distance be-
tween spina and the inner cavea-wall varies between 36-38m. It has been estimat-
ed that the circus could hold up to 65,000 spectators (however HUMPHREY 1986,
p. 303 gives 40-45,000; Fauquet ap. MAURIN 2008, p. 92 [chart] suggests 47,000).
The excavation produced several metric tons of pottery, numerous lamps and lamp-
moulds, more than 6,000 coins, and some 300 terracotta figurines. Vandal peri-
od: GHADDHAB 2008, p.115.
161
PICARD 1964 - a major argument was the inscription found in the floor of an
apsidal building near the Casa: Felix / populus / veneti (ILAfr. 385). SALOMONSON
1965, p. 91 rightly argued that the wealthy owner of the building supported this
faction; cf. DUNBABIN 1978, pp. 95 s.; ROSSITER 1992, p. 42; MAURIN 2008, p. 105.
But the text does at least prove that the Blue faction had a large group (‘populus’)
of supporters in the city during the fourth century: CAMERON 1976, p. 78.
162
NORMAN - HAECKL 1992. Scorpus at Rome allegedly earned 15 heavy sacks of
gold in one hour: Martial 10,74. That is perhaps feasible, allowing for a bit of po-
etic licence, since daylight hours in antiquity had no standard length, and in sum-
mer were longer - if he won around 2 sacks per victory, he would have needed to
win 7-8 races at 11 mins 30 secs each (the hour being calculated by multiplying
RICHARD GORDON
to the factions as needed 168. It is this suggestion I want to follow
up in the final sub-section relating to the defixiones.
Whose risks?
I have argued that the circus-defixiones at Carthage and Hadrume-
tum, unlike the ‘self-authored’ texts found in the necropoleis and
elsewhere in these cities, are the work of practitioners who claimed
special expertise in such matters derived from Egypt and provid-
ed their services for a fee. But who were their customers? Insofar
as this question has interested scholars, two suggestions have gen-
erally been canvassed: either the charioteers themselves or their sup-
porters in the various factions 169. The major difficulty in answer-
ing this question is the generic rules imposed by the practioners on
their texts: as I have pointed out, there are virtually no direct, ‘self-
authored’ curses in this domain that might point to a specific type
of authorship. That fact itself implies a relatively high degree of de-
liberation 170, of client-practitioner negotation, and a willingness to
pay for such services 171. These considerations alone exclude a sim-
ple model of hot-headed scribbling of curses by excited fans.
That being the case, we need to shift away from guesses, howev-
er plausible, and try to set up a model for contextualizing the cir-
cus-defixiones at Carthage and Hadrumetum. The most plausi-
ble model is that of risk-limitation by clients, which has been sug-
gested by Esther Eidinow for the judicial and the amatory curs-
es of Classical Athens 172. According to this model, oracles in the
Classical period, specifically that of Zeus at Dodona, functioned
as a device for minimizing personal risk in a variety of circum-
stances where the client needed to take decisions on the basis of
inadequate information. As such, they may be compared with the
phenomenon of the written curse in different contexts (mainly, at
this early period, involvement in law-suits, whose proliferation the
institution of radical democracy positively encouraged, and ama-
tory magic). Whereas the oracle – and of course there was an en-
tire range of oracular possibilities in antiquity, at all levels of in-
stitutionalization – enabled the client to adjust his expectations
and plans through exclusion, the judicial binding-curse aimed at
preventing an adverse outcome in court and providing a fair hear-
ing for the client in the context of a system where there were vir-
11’ 30” by 7 or 8, not continuously).
163
Until the Tetrarchy, Hadrumetum was in Africa Proconsularis; ‘Byzacena’ is
given as provenance because the mosaics date from after Diocletian.
164
FLORIANI SQUARCIAPINO 1979, pp. 279 s.; DUNBABIN 1982, p. 83; Hadrume-
tum: DUNBABIN 1978, pp. 93 s., 104-06, 113; ENNAÏFER 1983.
165
Mérida: BLANCO FREIJEIRO 1978, pp. 45 s. no. 43 with figs. 77 s. (pavement,
c.350-400p); contorniates: ALFÖLDI - ALFÖLDI ROSENBAUM 1990, pp. 24 s.
166
POxy 2480 with HARDY 1931, pp. 107 s.; CAMERON 1976, p. 10; ROSSITER 1992,
p. 45.
167
E.g. CIL VIII 8938 (Saldae); 9052, 9067, cf. FLORIANI SQUARCIAPINO 1979, pp.
278 s.; HUMPHREY 1986, pp. 568-71; MAURIN 2008, p. 101.
168
ROSSITER 1992.
169
E.g. FOUCHER 1964, pp. 163 s.; GAGER 1990; FAUQUET 2008, p. 270. MURA
1996 is disappointing; I have not been able to consult SICHET 2006.
170
The author of the ‘wedge’ series at Carthage habitually refers to the race be-
ing held ‘tomorrow’ (DT nos. 235 ll.13, 31; 236 ll. 9 s., 23; 237 ll. 12, 35; 238 ll.
11 s.; 239 ll. 11 s., 26; 240 ll. 11, 29 s.; 241 no. 241 ll, 19, 32), though in my view
this is merely a rhetorical device of insistence. In one case the race is even claimed
to be held ‘today’ (TREMEL 2004, p.p. 176 s. no. 66 ll. 9, 18 [1000 Amphores]).
At Hadrumetum, one text refers to ‘tomorrow and the day after’: DT no. 295 =
TREMEL 2004, pp. 142 s. no. 45 ll.17 s., 23 s.
171
As far as I know, we have no reliable information about costs in this area; giv-
en the range of knowledge and skill among defixiones in the Graeco-Egyptian tra-
dition, I assume there was an equal range of charges.
172
EIDINOW 2007, pp. 156-232.
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FIXING THE RACE: MANAGING RISKS IN THE NORTH AFRICAN CIRCUS
tually no safeguards against manipulation. We can adapt this mod-
el mutatis mutandis to magical binding-practice in the Empire,
and specifically to the circus in North Africa 173.
Where relatively high risks were institutionalized in the ancient
world, as in all dangerous sports, in public life (where rhetorical per-
formance was at a premium), in litigation, where the outcome was
always subject to manipulation, in potteries with their high rates of
wastage, among sex-workers, and in child-rearing, there flourished
a corresponding degree of ‘superstition’, i.e. a developed discourse
regarding malignant supernatural intervention, associated with a
range of customary techniques (such as amulets, gestures and catch-
phrases) for avoiding the evil eye and invoking ‘luck’ or ‘fortune’ 174.
In the context of Greek chariot-racing,indeed, the theme of the tarax-
ippos, the sudden, inexplicable shying of race-horses, was a topos 175.
Jerome mentions a charioteer at Gaza who, paralysed while racing,
diagnosed himself as having been attacked by a demon –, by impli-
cation through the medium of the evil eye 176. The fame and wealth
some charioteers achieved made invidia an attractive explanation –
of course others were always available – for their mishaps and fail-
ures 177. The accepted presence of invidia – an invisible malevolence
– in the circus may have created the context within which it became
tempting to try out the more focused – but of course also more dan-
gerous – technique of writing defixiones, once the availability of ‘for-
eign’ expertise in this area became known 178. There is indeed one
Latin defixio at Hadrumetum that is certainly by a charioteer, and
it does ask that a rival charioteer fail to win; but its main aim is erot-
ic – to force a woman who evidently found the rival more attrac-
tive 179. Moreover, although it is clearly ‘self-authored’, it uses three
voces magicae: alimbeu columbeu petalimbu, that also appear, along
with other voces in a Greek text that was found in the same necrop-
oleis, and which carries the same sequence of charaktêres as appear
in one of the major professional series 180. This, together with the
‘enclosure’ technique found on a couple of self-authored texts at
Carthage, implies that some limited awareness of Graeco-Egyptian
techniques did filter out beyond the group of practitioners, and
specifically among charioteers 181.
On the other hand, risk was a permanent aspect of the profes-
sional lives of charioteers – from that point of view their situation
173
See GORDON -MARCO SIMÓN 2010, p. 45.
174
DUNBABIN 1982, p. 83; DUNBABIN-DICKIE 1983; DICKIE 1993; on invidia in gen-
eral, a good discussion by CLERC 1995, pp.85-152; magic as plausible diagnosis:
GRAF 1996, pp. 151 s.
175
The most important text is Pausanias 6,20,17-19 (mainly on the race-course at
Olympia), where various explanations, from spooks to flashes caused by bright
sunshine, are canvassed.
176
Hier., Vita Hilarionis §9.4-6 Morales (Sources Chrétiennes no. 508) = §16 Migne;
cf. DÖLGER 1929a; DICKIE 2001, p. 294; cf. CLERC 1995, p. 298 (anchorites ex-
plaining bodily ailments with reference to demonic attack). The dramatic date
would be in the early IVp. An alternative explanation for the horses refusing to
budge, which did not invoke the evil eye but a deliberate spoiling act, was that
they had trodden on a wolf’s vertebra: Ail., Nat. 1,36.
177
On the supposed text against the evil eye held up by the victorious charioteer
on the Moknine mosaic (AE 2000: 1612a, b), see MAURIN 2008, p.107. I do not
cite evidence from Libanius in this connection, since by the mid-IVp accusations
of magic had become a preferred means of destroying one’s rivals and enemies

n me;n hJniovcwn,
(cf. Cod. Th 9,16,11). Thus the fact that Aetherius, consularis Syriae 365-71 CE,

n de; iJppokovmwn, oi»ı te e[rgon ajnapetannuvnai toi
ı a{rmasi ta;ı
had some charioteeers and stable-grooms tortured (pollw
pollw
quvraı), who had evidently been accused of sorcery by disappointed supporters of
unlucky factions at Antioch, tells us nothing very much (Lib., Or. 1,161); cf. PE-
TIT 1955, p. 98 s.; CLERC 1995, p. 166.
178
The theme goes back to the myth of Pelops at Olympia: Amphion of Thebes
is said to have assisted his victory by magical means: Pausanias 6,20,17. For what
55
PROVENANCE CONTENT LANGUAGE TREMEL NO
1000 Amphores Small fragment with 3 Latin Greek 65
Carthage names of horses
Hadrumetum Circus + amatory; first person Latin 21
text (see p. 000)
Hadrumetum The horses of Dauriatus. Greek 35
Same 3 voces as in §21 +
Adonai Sabaoth Semesila (sic)
Hadrumetum Competent professional text Bilingual 45
against 4 horses only, listed in
3 different orders
Hadrumetum Competent professional text
against Archaelaos and
4 horses ‘all day long’ Greek 46
Table 4. North African texts that either were or may have been written at the in-
stance of individual drivers.
was quite different from the individual involved in a law-suit, sum-
moned before the governor at the provincial assizes, or determined
to create or break a marital or an erotic relationship. It is there-
fore hard to see why, even given the presence of a new type of
practitioner, drivers should have chosen in the later IIp to start
trying to protect themselves from the risk of defeat. The only re-
al possibility I see here is that one or other faction started to gain
a substantial edge over the others, so that the chances of winning
prizes were markedly reduced for some teams; this situation might
plausibly have created a demand for a new type of risk-mini-
mization, moving beyond the passive technology of the amulet to-
wards active restraint of opponents. Part of the effectiveness of
this move would have lain precisely in rumour, and the psycho-
logical advantage gained from opponents’ fears that they had been
targeted. Another function of such rumour would have been to
reduce the ‘disconfirmation effect’, i.e. the realization that such
curses did not in fact consistently increase the client’s chances of
winning. Moreover, the sharp fall in prize-monies in IIIp may fur-
ther have increased the attraction of such investment on the part
of drivers 182. However, in my view, a plausible case involving char-
ioteers can only be made for a handful of defixiones (see Table 4).
it is worth, Arnobius claims that charioteers used magic beneficient and malign:
«in curriculis debilitare, incitare, tardare» (Adv. nat. 1,43).
179
DT no. 265 = TREMEL 2004, p. 113 no. 2 (IIIp): «Alimbeu columbeu petalimbu
faciatis Victoria quem peperit Suavulva amante furente pre amore meo neque som-
nu videat donec at me veniat puella[r]u d[eli]cias. // Desecus Ballincum Lolliorum
de curru actus ne possit ate me venire; et tu quiqumque es demon te oro ut illa co-
gas amoris et desideri [mei] causa veni[re at me]». Note also the author’s aware-
ness of the importance of naming the mother (whose name however he did not
know, hence ‘Suavulva’), and the address to a demon.
180
For some reason unclear to me, TREMEL 2004, p.113 claims it was found in a
cemetery NW of the city, whereas Audollent says it was one of those that were
found by Choppard and Hannezo in the 1890s in one of the three necropoleis
along the Kairouan road, due west of Hadrumetum. The other text that uses the
Alimbeu-sequence is DT no. 285 = TREMEL 2004, p.131 no. 35 (cf. n.79 above).
181
TREMEL 2004, p. 55 cites in this connection the case of a charioteer who was
executed in 364 CE for getting his son to learn the magical arts: Amm. 26,3,3. For
me this is a classic instance of the beliefs of the police authorities influencing the
answers produced under torture, just as in the early-modern European Hexen-
verfolgung. The same applies to the rule in Cod. Th 8,16,1 that condemns a char-
ioteer who employs or protects a magician to capital punishment. By this time,
‘magic in the circus’ was a trope or an idée fixe, which is not of course to say that
individuals did not on occasion try it – indeed we know that sometimes they did.
But there seems little relation between the idée fixe and the number of defixiones
known to archaeology, whatever proportion we assume to be lost.
182
Fall in prize-money: HORSMANN 1998, p. 164.
06 Gordon (35-62):Layout 1 31-07-2012 9:01 Pagina 56

56 RICHARD GORDON

As for punters, the most likely reason for going to the lengths of PROVENANCE CONTENT LANGUAGE TREMEL NO
paying a practitioner in this context is not mere enthusiasm but Carthage ‘Wedge’ series, highly competent Greek 54
gambling 183. Petronius makes Trimalchio’s cook bet with his mas- but lacunate; only 2 drivers (incl.
ter whether the Greens will win; Martial imagines his readers Dionysios, White); list of horses
glancing at his verse only when they have had enough of enthus- confused
ing over Scorpus and his introiugus Incitatus, and laying their Carthage ‘Wedge’ series, highly competent Greek 55
but very lacunate; only 1 driver
bets 184. Tertullian describes the pagan circus at Carthage: «Aspice (Dionysios); list of horses
populum ad id spectaculum iam cum furore venientem, iam tu- incomplete
multuosum, iam caecum, iam de sponsionibus concitatum», «See Carthage Highly competent; against 2 Greek 60
the supporters coming to the circus now all worked up, now roar- Bluequadrigae (Secundinus;
ing (with excitement), now unable to see (what is going on), now Victoricus) and a singula driven
roused to a pitch by betting» 185. On the other hand, for the or- by Messala. Uncertain about
precise names
dinary punter there would have been little point in going to a spe-
Carthage One of the two most technically Greek 61
cialist in order to reduce the risk of losing a bet: it is one thing
competent of these texts; against
to consult a diviner, even an astrologer, about such outcomes, quite 4 named drivers + 12 horses for
another to have a defixio prepared 186. To make such a step worth- the Reds; some uncertainty
while, a relatively large amount of money must have been at stake. about the names of the horses
Yet we do not hear of people ruining themselves in the circus Carthage The other most technically Bilingual 62
(there were of course no market forms of betting such as book- competent of these texts; against
makers or the Tote): it was gaming with dice that the rich found a Blue team; curse-text virtually
illegible
amusing enough to risk losing large sums of money – Augustus
Carthage Mainly voces in Greek alphabet Bilingual 63
lost 20,000 HS in one session –, despite the hoary legislation (the enclosed by a frame sequence;
lex alearia dated from 204 BCE, the lex Cornelia from 81 BCE) Latin curse sequence v. brief,
that forbade it. Dicing needed skill and knowledge as well as luck: no details
as everyone knows, Claudius wrote an entire book on it; in the Carthage Competent; against the Blue Greek 66
Apocolocyntosis, he is condemned to spend eternity dicing with a (1000 driver Strabonianus + 4 named
box with a hole in the bottom 187. However we should allow for Amphores) horses 190; also against 4 named
introiugi whose drivers are
some individual punters gambling so high on racing results that

ijdiw/

)
evidently unknown
they needed to limit their risk by consulting a specialist practi- (su;n tw/
tioner 188. On the other hand, recognizing specific texts of this kind Carthage Very competent but fragmentary; Greek 67
is difficult; the best criterion is probably the small numbers of (Arena) names of 3 horses and a
horses (teams) involved, on the assumption that such individuals suvnzugoı survive, little space for
may have had a relatively clear idea of the team most likely to others; mid-IIIp
threaten the team they had laid bets on. This criterion, unsatis- Carthage Text uncertain. Semi-literate Bilingual 68
factory as it is, allows us to pick out a few defixiones from Latin with 1 Greek vox, a vowel-
pyramid & an entangled driver;
Carthage, and two related series from Hadrumetum, that name against at least 11 horses; unclear
only a handful of horses, a phenomenon that is otherwise diffi- whether a driver is named
cult to explain (see Table 5). Several of these mention the faction; Hadrumetum Baitmo Arbitto series, directed Latin 36-41+50
others do not; in one or two cases, the informant or client did not (where stated) against Greens

ı sunzeucqw
sin vel sim» .

yet know the names of all the horses, so the practitioner added
kai; o{soi eja;n aujtoi 189
183
So FLORIANI SQUARCIAPINO 1979, pp. 278 n.1: «forse si può congetturare che
i gruppi di aurighi o di scommettitore di ciascuna fazione ricorressero a fattuc-
chiere diversi …»; PAVIS D’ESCURAC 1987, pp. 464 s. (betting in advance); TREMEL
2004, p. 54. HOPKINS 1983, p.189 went so far as to claim that gambling was the
‘emotional glue’ of the games as a whole, whatever he meant by the expression.
On the extravagant behaviour of ancient spectators, cf. e.g. Sen., Ep. Mor. 83,7;
Plin., Ep. 9,6 or Amm. 14,6,26 with HARRIS 1972, pp. 223-26; GUTTMANN 1986,
pp. 179 s.; WEILER 1987; WISTRAND 1992. The emperor Caius is supposed to have
used less indirect methods to dispose of inconveniently successful teams – by poi-
son: Cass. Dio 59,14,5 (no doubt ben trovato - Suet., Caius 55,3 speaks only of a
gladiator named Columbus).
184
«Coepit … dominum suum sponsione provocare, ‘si prasinus proximis circensi-
bus primam palmam’ …»: Petron., Sat. 70,13; «sed cum sponsio fabulaeque lassae
de Scorpo fuerint et Incitato»: Martial. 11.1.13.
185
Tert., Spect. 16,1. The word sponsio in this sense is however rare; it is clearly
adapted from the usage of depositing money during a dispute at law, with the for-
mula sponsio facta est, cf. Cic., Quinct. 36 and 71; Rosc. 10; Iuv., Sat. 6,27.
186
Ov., Ars 1,145: Cuius equi venient, facito, studiose, requiras, seems to imply the
consultation of a diviner to predict winners. Diviners, and more specifically as-
trologers, hung about the Circus in Rome in the late Republic: «Nunc illa testabor,
non me sortilegos neque eos, qui quaestus causa hariolentur, ne psychomantia quidem,
and Whites; never more than
6 horses named
Hadrumetum Ocuria anoc series; no faction Latin 42-44
given; up to 4 horses named,
including Lynceus from Baitmo
Arbitto series
Table 5. North African circus-defixiones that may have been commissioned by
punters
quibus Appius, amicus tuus, uti solebat, agnoscere; non habeo denique nauci Marsum
augurem, non vicanos haruspices, non de circo astrologos, non Isiacos coniectores, non
interpretes somniorum» (Cic., Div. 1,132). Firmicus Maternus, math. 2,30,12 advis-
es the serious astrologer not to meddle with such business: «secerne te ab spectacu-
lorum semper illecebris, ne quis te fautorem alicuius esse partis existimet».
187
Augustus: Suet., Aug. 71,2; Claudius: Suet., Claud. 40,3; Sen., Apocol. 15; on
the attractions of gaming for the Roman élite and the urban population more gen-
erally, see PURCELL 1995.
188
The deposition of at least two anepigraphic defixiones in the arena at Carthage
suggests that individuals knew vaguely what was to be done but were either illit-
erate or had no idea of how to compose an effective curse.
189
DT no. 241 ll.11 s, 23 = TREMEL 2004, pp. 167 s. no. 60; DT no. 242 ll.62 s.=
TREMEL 2004, pp. 169-171 no. 61 (both Carthage).
190
The letters read as —] rJo≥usev[ou ? in l.25 can hardly be correct, since they are
followed in the next line by another reference to Strabonianus.
06 Gordon (35-62):Layout 1 31-07-2012 9:01 Pagina 57
FIXING THE RACE: MANAGING RISKS IN THE NORTH AFRICAN CIRCUS
Where are the faction- or stable-owners?
So far we have looked only at texts that might plausibly have been
commissioned by individuals facing specific risks within the cir-
cus itself, either as drivers or as punters. But there remain a num-
ber of texts, which include three series, one at Carthage and two
at Hadrumetum, directed at large numbers of teams (see Table 6).
A number of features of these texts make it hard to believe that
they were commissioned either by individual drivers or by pun-
ters. One is the contrast between the amount of detailed infor-
mation they contain about teams and the information used by the
groups in Tables 4 and 5. The three best-preserved of the ‘Sar-
bismarab’-group at Hadrumetum list respectively 35, 26 and 24
horses, using many of the same names, but with numerous varia-
tions in order – that is, they derive from lists made up on differ-
ent days; but the person who gave the lists to the practitioner (or
who wrote them himself) was not at all interested in the factions,
which are not mentioned. The other major series from Hadrume-
tum, the ‘Enclosing group’, which consists of ten texts, some of
them listing up to 46 horses, is directed against the Reds and the
Blues at different dates 191, but the information given is sometimes
muddled and the lists cannot always be sorted into intelligible
teams. Almost all the drivers attacked in the‘Wedge’ series at
Carthage come from three factions, Blues, Greens and Reds.
Granted that we know virtually nothing about the advertising for
the ludi circenses, it seems worth asking who might have disposed
of inside information on this scale, especially in view of the con-
trast with the evidently limited interest – or is it lack of knowl-
edge? – of other circus-texts in such listing. Did ordinary punters
have prior access to the names of all the drivers and all the hors-
es – including supernumerary horses – in all the factions? For that
matter, did ordinary agitatores have access to such detailed in-
formation about the arrangements of other factions? 192 It seems
to me that the only people who might have had that sort of in-
formation on a regular basis were the owners of the factions or,
at a still higher level, the owners of the stables that supplied the
factions with horses and personnel, insofar as they were differ-
ent 193. In relation to investment, the owners of factions ran the
greatest risk of loss if the opposing teams ran better drivers over
a number of seasons; but stable-owners also stood to lose if their
horses were not up to scratch – Juvenal remarks pertinently on
191
This proves that the organization of the factions in North Africa differed from
that in Rome, where the Reds were linked the Greens, and the Blues to the Whites
(cf. n. 143 above). The variations in the names of the horses and in the deploy-
ment of the scheme, especially AE 1907: 68, suggest the series extends over a few
years.
192
One agitator at Rome, whose name is lost, evidently kept a careful record of
the names of all the introiugi with which he won victories over his career, together
with their breed (afer, hispanus etc.), the number of victories and often the prize
money: CIL VI 10053 = 10054 = 33937 = 37834 = AE 1903: 161 = ILChrVet 808a.
But this is a purely personal record and tells us nothing about the information
available to drivers about the competition.
193
PAVIS D’ESCURAC 1987, p. 465 rightly stresses the potential importance of this
group.
194
Iuv., Sat. 8, 56-67 (cf. n. 106 above).
195
Lollii: DT. No. 265 b 2= TREMEL 2004, p. 113 no. 21; Messali: DT. No. 241 ll.11,
22 s, 31 = TREMEL 2004, p. 167 no. 60 (some uncertainty about the number); Reg-
ulus: DT nos. 275-75, 282-84, AE 1907: 68 = TREMEL 2004, nos. 25-29, 32-34, 49.
Although the Lollii are not recorded in any of the 699 known texts from Hadrume-
tum (apart from this and possibly [Lol]lia Chrysis in CIL VIII 22946 = ILTun 166
= ILPBardo 1, 131), the gens was widely settled all over Proconsularis (I count at
least 29 cases); nor does the cognomen Regulus otherwise occur there (only three
occurrences in Proconsularis, of which the most prominent is Q. Arrianus ~, a fla-
57
the fate of race-horses that consistently fail to win 194. It is indeed
possible that we know the names of some of these owners: al-
though almost all the drivers seem to be freed, one text from
inseriamo
Hadrumetum mentions a driver owned by the Lollii; another a
qui la
horse, Dominator, belonging to the Messali; several others a driv-
er named Superstes ‘the Lydian’, owned by Regulus 195.
table 6
spezzan-
The texts in question are almost all members of series, that is, the
dola per
items in each series were conceived and written by the same in-
non
dividuals largely for the same clients. This fact lends particular
toccare la
interest to a passage of Jerome’s Life of Hilarion, which has often
been used to ‘illustrate’ circus-magic but whose value in this con-
sequenza
nection has not generally been appreciated 198. The scene is set in
delle note
the Roman colony of Gaza in the early IVp, at a period when
o
mounting the games was a compulsory liturgy upon office-hold-
cambiamo
ers. The principal figure is a Christian stable-owner named Itali-
la nume-
cus who is represented at odds with a pagan, a worshipper of the
local deity ‘Marnas’, who has been ‘elected’ IIvir and is therefore
razione e
obliged to hold ludi circenses 199. For Jerome’s scenario to work,
mante-
the IIvir must be assumed to be using horses supplied by a pagan
niamo la
stable, just as Italicus may have been IIvir and editor as well as a
table tutta
stable-owner (otherwise he could hardly have invoked compul-
insieme a
sion: «functionem esse publicam, et hoc se non tam velle sed cogi»:
11,7 Morales). The problem for Italicus is that, as a Christian, he
p. 58?
may not have recourse to magic, whereas his rival can:
«Hic itaque, aemulo suo habente maleficum, qui daemoniacis
quibusdam imprecationibus et huius perpendiret equos et illius
concitaret ad cursum, venit ad beatum Hilarionem, et non tam
adversarium laedi quam se defendi obsecravit» 200.
Hilarion smiles and, after the requisite lecture on the wickedness
of the circus, helps Italicus by giving him ordinary water in the
amphora he (Hilarion) used for storing his own drinking-water.
After thus purifying his stables, his horses, the drivers and the
starting-gates (8,9), and so breaking the power of his opponent’s
magic, Italicus’ teams duly win the race, Marnas is subdued by
Christ – and Hilarion is accused by the crowd of using magic him-
self.
The fictional or novelistic character of Jerome’s three anchorites’
men perpetuus from Kissera/Chusira: CIL VIII 703 = ILS 5564 = AE 1993: 1723).
196
I am not certain where to classify DT no. 232 = CIL VIII 12506 = TREMEL
2004, p. 150 no. 51, a fragmentary and partly indecipherable text from Carthage
that names at least 10 horses (one name, Romanus, repeated) above a drawing of
a cock-headed demon, with voces on either side. It perhaps belongs here, but is
not part of a known series.
197
The phrase Argutus …dextroiugus Glauci in l.5, can only mean ‘Argutus, the
right-hand horse of Glaucus’ four‘ (Glaucus is the horse first named in the list
and must be the introiugus), seems to imply that the original list from which the
practitioner was working was very detailed. Most of this series specify veneti et
russei in the frame curse (there is however no frame in nos. 30, 31, 34 49) and no
faction at all is mentioned in nos. 30, 31. In nos. 32 and 33 the faction-names are
largely lost.
198
Oddly enough, DT, pp. cxxi s. fails to cite it, though he does reprint another
scenario in the same Life, the virgin of God possessed by a demon (Vit. Hilar. 12
Morales = 21 Migne); but see DÖLGER 1929b; CAMERON 1976, p. 10; CLERC 1995,
p. 165; GRAF 1996, p. 142; DICKIE 2001, pp. 294 s.
199
Held in honour of the Roman deity Consus; see also Tert., de spect. 5,7 s.; 8,6.
200
Hier., Vit. Hilar. 11,5 Morales = 20 Migne (cf. n. 171): «So Italicus, whose ri-
val employed a magician to hold back some horses and speed up others by using
incantations addressed to demons, consulted blessed Hilarion and begged him
not so much to make his rival suffer as to protect Italicus himself».
06 Gordon (35-62):Layout 1 31-07-2012 9:01 Pagina 58
58
PROVENANCE CONTENT
Carthage List of 28 horses in 2 cols., not
arranged in teams. Framing
drawings of the circus and
carceres. 6 voces + voces-frame 196
Carthage ‘Wedge series’, highly competent.
Against Dionysius, Lamyrus,
Restitutianus (Blues) + 14 horses;
sunzuvgoi: Protos, Felix,
Narcissus (Greens) + 14 horses
– some as in §57
Carthage ‘Wedge series’, highly competent.
Against Euprepes and Felix
(Reds) + 12 horses (1 omitted);
Dionysius and Lamyrus (Blues)
+ 12 horses
Carthage ‘Wedge series’, highly competent.
Against Protos (Greens) +
8 horses (which re-appear in §58;
almost same as §53); suvnzugoı:
Dionysius (Blues) + 4 horses
(re-appear in §53)
Carthage ‘Wedge series’, highly competent.
Against Protos, Felix, Narcissus
(as in §53 and 59, Greens) +
14 horses, many of which
re-appear in §§53, 57 and 59
Carthage ‘Wedge series’, highly competent.
Against Protos, Felix, Narcissus
(as in §53 and 58, Greens) +
14 horses, some of which
re-appear in §§53, 58, but in
different order
Hadrumetum Sarbismarab series. No drivers,
35 horses, mainly in sequences
of 4; two are pairs (comes); some
names e.g. Germanicus, Blandus,
Salutaris, Clarus (one a copying
error) occur more than once.
The faction prasini occurs in ll.9 s.
Hadrumetum Sarbismarab series. No drivers,
26 horses, all of which occur in
§22. The order is largely the
same as in §22 with omissions
Hadrumetum Sarbismarab series. No drivers,
24 horses, all of which appear in
to §§22, 23; the order is identical
§23, with only Basilius and Nilus
omitted from that list
Hadrumetum Sarbismarab series (?frag.).
No drivers, 7 horses, all from the
other lists but in a different order
Hadrumetum ‘Frame series’: 7 agitatores (only
Superstitianus and Superstes
specified as Reds ) + 42 horses
(23 Blues [veneti ll.5,10], 19
Reds). It is impossible to
reconstruct the quadriga-teams
on the basis of the information
supplied (5 x 4 + 3) 197
Hadrumetum ‘Frame series’: 8 agitatores (all
those in §25 + Romanus, but in
different order; only
Superstitianus and Superstes
specified as Reds) + 47 horses;
some overlap in names with §25
Table 6. Texts, mostly in series, listing large numbers of teams/horses.
RICHARD GORDON
LANGUAGE TREMEL NO Hadrumetum ‘Frame series’ (frag.): same 8 Latin 27
agitatores as in §26, but different
Bilingual 52
order. Faction given. Only
7 horses’ names survive: same as
in §26, different order
Greek 53 Hadrumetum ‘Frame series’ (frag.): Same 8 Latin 28
agitatores in same order as §27.
Faction given. 37 horses names
survive, some overlap with §§25
and 26
Hadrumetum ‘Frame series’ (frag.): only Latin 29
Superstitianus, Supersites and
Greek 56
Romanus of those in §§27-28 +
4 new names. No faction in main
list. Only 22 horses’ names
survive; little overlap with the
other lists
Greek 57
Hadrumetum ‘Frame series’: reduced model, Latin 30
mentioning only 4 of the
agitatores in §§26-28 + Zeno.
No faction. 11 horses names
survive, limited overlap.
Greek 58 Hadrumetum ‘Frame series’, damaged. Latin 31
Reduced model, related to §30;
only the name Na[ucelliu(m)
Superstitianu(m) —] survives.
No faction. 12 horses’ names
survive, some overlap with §30.
Greek 59
Hadrumetum ‘Frame series’: 8 agitatores + at Latin 32
least 2 others, but both Castor
and Helius are repeated, and the
second list in ll.22-25 differs
from the first (ll.2-7). Faction
restored. 39 + 2 horses, mostly
Latin 22 as in §26
Hadrumetum ‘Frame series’: Same 7 agitatores Latin 33
as §25, in almost same order.
Faction given. 48 + 1 horses
listed, considerable overlap with
§32.
Latin 23 Hadrumetum ‘Frame series’, damaged. 6 Latin 34
agitatores, names as in §25 but
Salutaris missing, Repentinus
promoted. The second and third
lists (ll.17-21, 21-24) differ from
Latin 24 one another and from the first.
Faction given. 60 horses named,
considerable overlap with §25
Hadrumetum ‘Frame series’, damaged, reduced Latin 48
model. No agitatores, no faction.
Latin 47 Names of 14 horses can be
deciphered, room for at least 12
others; no overlap with other lists
Latin 25 Hadrumetum ‘Frame series’: 7 agitatores, incl. Latin 49
only Privatianus, Helius,
Repentinus and Superstes from
§§25-28, 32-34 + Pompeius,
Felix, Surdus. Faction given after
the drivers’ names. Names of
46 horses, some overlap with §34
Latin 26
06 Gordon (35-62):Layout 1 31-07-2012 9:01 Pagina 59
FIXING THE RACE: MANAGING RISKS IN THE NORTH AFRICAN CIRCUS
lives has long been recognized 201. The indirect speech in this par-
ticular story has been carefully arranged by Jerome to emphasize
the fact that Italicus was subject to legal compulsion and to show
his proper appreciation of the normative Christian interdiction of
magic: «nec posse hominem christianum uti magicis artibus». Hi-
larion is invited to take the opportunity of doing down the pa-
gans: «sed a servo Christi potius auxilium petere, maxime contra
Gazenses, adversarios Dei» (11, 7). Implicitly too he supplies a pi-
ously pat answer to the question of how Christians might protect
themselves against magical attack (and in doing so reveals the clas-
sificatory ambiguity of all symbolic action in this context: my pro-
tective magic is your aggressive magic, and vice versa) 202. Grant-
ed that the scenario of one Christian stable-owner against a pa-
gan is mere dramatic simplification, that the pagan = magic equa-
tion is mere Christian cant, and that Italicus’ reasons for claiming
that his opponent was using magic are never revealed, two fea-
tures of the scenario seem to me credible. First, the motif of ac-
tual or potential losses inducing stable- or faction-owners to have
recourse to magic in order to reduce their future risks: Italicus is
made to claim that he needs to act in order to protect himself from
disadvantage – his opponent started it. Secondly, the motif of reg-
ularly using a specific practitioner for this purpose is precisely what
is implied by the existence of defixiones at Hadrumetum that were
composed over a period by the same men against more or less the
same teams. In one case at least it must have been the owners of
either the Greens or the Whites who reckoned they needed ad-
ditional help. At Carthage one and the same practitioner seems to
have been mainly engaged by the Whites – at any rate, as I have
pointed out, his major texts are directed against Blues, Greens and
Reds 203. But behind the factions we may dimly discern the inter-
ests of breeding and training stables that supplied horses, men and
equipment, and whose risks of financial loss were greatest.
* ations such as excavation-patterns – is that Graeco-Egyptian prac-
It is a truism in the study of defixiones, not only but especially
those in the Graeco-Egyptian tradition, that they conceal far more
than they reveal – they are full of largely meaningless information
about imaginary beings and their code-words, but give us almost
no insight into the stories behind them, which for the social his-
torian would have been infinitely more interesting. So here too in
the case of the circus defixiones of North Africa. We are reduced
to guesses about even the most elementary aspects of the implied
scenarios. Nevertheless something can be achieved by mapping
different contexts against which specific features of these texts
stand out.
First, comparison with ‘self-authored’ curse-texts establishes the
fact that defixiones agonisticae and specifically circus-defixiones
201
WINTER 1904; KELLY 1975, pp. 172-74; LECLERC 2007.
202
«La magie s’inscrivait aussi dans le réseau complexe des relations sociales con-
flictuelles»: CLERC 1995, p. 162. DÖLGER 1929c hunts in vain for Christian par-
allels for purification by water – it is in fact a motif taken from pagan protective
ritual (see n. 67 above).
203
DT nos. 234, 237-40 = TREMEL 2004 nos. 53, 57-59. Two however are direct-
ed against White teams: one, against Dionysius and Superstitianus, is lacunate,
but even so the teams do not add up (DT no. 235 = TREMEL 2004, pp. 155 s. no.
54); the other, even more damaged, is directed against Dionysius alone and four
horses, one of whom, Arbustus, also appears in the previous text (DT no. 236 =
TREMEL 2004, pp. 157 s. no. 55). I have counted these among the texts commis-
sioned by punters.
59
are virtually all written in the Graeco-Egyptian tradition by more
or less knowledgable practitioners – the one clearly self-authored
circus-text, at Carthage, shows knowledge of the relevant tech-
niques. Second, the earliest-known circus-defixiones (and indeed
defixiones agonisticae) have been found in Carthage and
Hadrumetum in North Africa, where there were Roman-type lu-
di circenses not Greek competitions, which were differently or-
ganized. Third, the absence of relevant models from Egypt im-
plies that the genre may have been created by one or two Grae-
co-Egyptian practitioners who arrived in Carthage and set up
shop. It was the massive institutionalization of the ludi – the mon-
umentalized circus, the wealth of the local editores and the pres-
ence of native horse-flesh – that prompted the exploitation of a
new niche for their services.
Then again, comparison with literary and iconographic represen-
tations of races shows how the composers of at least some of these
texts used familiar images of the race, with their conventional mo-
ments and dramas, to lend the authority of the stereotype to their
appeals to the succession of nether powers. Finally, shifting the
emphasis away from ‘competition’ to ‘risk management’ suggests
a new approach to the issue of commissions: who stands to lose
what? This naturally remains the most speculative area, but com-
parison with the organization of the circus in Rome does at least
allow us to introduce new considerations, and revalue familiar
texts. More we cannot expect.
This type of contextualization can however be pushed further. If
the fact that the circus-texts at Carthage are mainly in Greek points
clearly to the cultural horizon of the practitioners who wrote them,
the fact that those from Hadrumetum are almost all in Latin shows
that translation and linguistic accommodation was perfectly pos-
sible 204. Why then have no similar texts been found in any of the
other North African cities with monumental circuses? The most
plausible answer, it seems to me, – apart from obvious consider-
titioners saw no need to penetrate beyond these two coastal cities
and possibly Lepcis 205. Because knowledge of this praxis remained
largely their secret, and there was no network of similar practi-
tioners in the interior, it was not circulated in formularies on pa-
pyrus or codex, and so died out with the families during the
IIIp 206. At any rate the later efforts from eastern Mediterranean
cities and Rome itself show almost no generic similarities to those
from North Africa and clearly derive from different models; they
also belong to a different politico-social milieu, one in which the
factions became significant political actors and where accusations
of magical practice, always a favourite device of delatores because
of their lack of specificity, acquired a new virulence under the
Christian Empire 207.
204
The texts from Hadrumetum extend the formal experiments known from the
Carthage texts in quite new directions.
205
Lepcis Magna was likewise a flourishing port city; however the sole circus-defixio
(which was found beneath the carceres in the circus itself) is a rather wretched brief
effort in Greek dating from IVp (SEG 27: 1837 = TREMEL 2004, p. 180 no. 69). It bears
no relation, stylistic or other, to the earlier texts from Carthage and Hadrumetum.
206
I have no positive suggestion make about the fact that in both cities the cir-
cus-defixiones apparently ceased to be written at some time in IIIp.
207
Cf. FUNKE 1967; PAVIS D’ESCURAC 1987, pp. 453-461, 465-67; CLERC 1995, pp.
204-237, 239-321; DICKIE 2001, pp. 251-321; SFAMENI GASPARRO 2002; LUTZ 2005,
pp. 184-218; 245-248.
06 Gordon (35-62):Layout 1 31-07-2012 9:01 Pagina 60
60
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