For All Time: An Examination of Romantic Love Through Curse Tablets
The current prevailing model for the study of gender and sexuality in Greco-Roman antiquity defines relationships as based upon either power or penetration. Through analysis of the amatory defixiones, or curse tablets, it will be demonstrated that romantic love, in addition to relationships based on domination and familial and political alliances, existed in the classical world.
THE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL IMPLICATIONS OF CURSE TABLETS [DEFIXIONES] IN BRITAIN AND ON THE CONTINENT
The tradition of writing curses on lead tablets appears to have originated in Greece, with the earliest examples having been discovered in Sicily, Olbia and Attica dated to the fifth century B.C., and by the second century AD they were being written throughout Western Europe, with this practice continuing throughout the Mediterranean until at least the sixth century A.D.