Bath curse tablets Bath curse tablets The Bath curse tablets are a collection of about 130 Roman era curse tablets (or "defixiones" in Latin) discovered in 1979/1980 in the English city of Bath. The tablets invoke the intercession of the goddess Sulis Minerva in the return of stolen goods and to curse the perpetrators of the thefts. Inscribed mostly in British Latin, they have been used to attest to the everyday spoken vernacular of the Romano-British population of the second to fourth centuries A.D. The Roman baths and temple dedicated to the goddess Sulis Minerva in the English city of Bath (founded by
Roman Baths (Bath) legend was given great prominence as a royal endorsement of the waters' qualities, with the embellishment that the spring had cured Bladud and his herd of pigs of leprosy through wallowing in the warm mud. The name Sulis continued to be used after the Roman invasion, leading to the town's Roman name of "Aquae Sulis" ("the waters of Sulis"). The temple was constructed in 60–70 AD and the bathing complex was gradually built up over the next 300 years. During the Roman occupation of Britain, and possibly on the instructions of Emperor Claudius, engineers drove oak piles to provide a