Cursing Prayers and Female Vengeance in the Ancient Greek World

This chapter explores the relationship between curses and gender in ancient literature and tablets, demonstrating the ways in which they could provide women with an empowering means of achieving vengeance. It compares examples of cursing acts in ancient greek literary texts (in particular Chryses in the Iliad, Oedipus in the Oedipus at Colonus, and Althaea's myth), together with a group of inscribed prayers for justice from the sanctuary of Demeter and Kore in Knidos (modern Turkey). It argues that through the very act of making a cursing-prayer and with the help of divine and mortal women, Greek women were able to defend their own reputations and punish their enemies with social surveillance, loss of face, and social exclusion.