'Women and the magic of silence in the Roman Gaul'

Name: 'Women and the magic of silence in the Roman Gaul'
Start: 2025-11-12T12:30:00+0000
End: 2025-11-12T12:30:00+0000

12 November 2025

Wolfson College

Similar events

Medieval French Research Seminar

27 October

‘Quelle foi accordait-on aux fictions au Moyen Âge ? Le lecteur au miroir de la métalepse (XIIe-XVe siècles)’ Mireille Seguy (Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle)

Talk 'The agreements of the priests of Soknopaiou Nesos: new sources for the organisation and the economy of an Egyptian provincial temple in the 1st and 2nd c. CE'

28 October

Sandra Lippert (CNRS, UMR 8546 AOROC, Paris) and Maren Schentuleit (AMES, Oxford University)

Soazick Kerneis (Maison Française d’Oxford & Wolfson College)

Silencing women was the rule in Roman times as voice was the marker of male superiority. But in the Roman Empire, the framework of speech underwent change. Gossip could result in false allegations and lead to trial. Female muteness may have served women well as a skill. Before the trial or to avoid it, litigants asked the specialist of silence to cut out dangerous tongues. Who were these experts? A Gaulish source, the so-called Plomb du Larzac, a lead curse tablet dated to 100 AD, talks about a fight of witches in a judicial context. The interpretation of the text is difficult since it is written in Gaulish. Comparing it with Ovid's Metamorphoses may promote the idea of a female expertise in the magic of silence.

SCHEID J., « Myth, Cult and Reality in Ovid's Fasti », in PCPhS, vol. 38 (1992), p. 118-131.

P.Y. Lambert, La langue gauloise, éd. Errance, 2003, p. 162-175.