Amulets in Rome: a common protection against the evil eye

II. Magic in women’s daily lives

Ancient civilizations have left us a large number of objects to which protective and apotropaic functions (against the evil eye) were attributed. Made of a wide variety of materials (gems, clay, metal, or papyrus, among others), with or without inscriptions of magical texts, they gave those who wore them a certain security against wicked supernatural forces.

In a very particular way, the Roman people used a very large number of phallic-shaped amulets, known as fascinum, which became widely known with the discovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and had a disturbing effect on the morals of the time. These amulets have been found in a variety of materials and in many forms: earrings, rings, oil lamps or bas-reliefs. But perhaps the most striking representation is that of the so-called tintinabula, wind chimes that were hung in houses to ward off invidia («the harmful gaze»).

Children were a particularly vulnerable group in antiquity, for whom amulets were almost indispensable. These objects also imposed gender distinctions. On the one hand, bullae («bubbles»), a kind of pouch often made of metal, which included some kind of amulet and were specifically for boys, who wore them around their necks until they assumed the toga virilis (the coming of age for Roman boys). On the other hand, although the playwright Plautus (Rudens 1171) reports that girls could also wear a bulla, according to Isidore of Seville in his Etymologies (19.31.17), the typical female amulet was the lunula («small moon»), which, as its name indicates, had the shape of a crescent moon. Plautus (Epidicus 639-640) also testifies to them and, although they are not very common in the figurative arts, we find them represented in one of the girls that appear in the Ara pacis, the huge altar of peace that Augustus ordered to be erected.

Luis Unceta Gómez