What I love about this example is that the writer is making an offering to the goddess of something that he or she no longer possesses. The goddess only gets the goods if the thief fesses up and drops them off at her temple!

More than 130 such curse tablets were recovered from the sacred spring in Bath. According to Curse Tablets from Roman Britain, “Tablets were commonly deposited in locations where the gods alone could read them.” Certainly, these writers could never have imagined that their curses would become objects of such interest some twenty centuries later!

Taking the waters

This is my point: from one source and another, there was lots of lead in the Bathwater. But in the 18th and 19th centuries, Bath was a fashionable destination in part because people believed that bathing in its famous waters would cure many things, including leprosy! I was interested to learn from my tour guide Diana that in that period any sort of scaly skin ailment was called leprosy, and bathing in mineral water, including salt water, does help such conditions. I’m guessing this is why in Jane Austen’s and Georgette Heyer’s novels “sea-bathing” is sometime prescribed to persons in ill health.

Today, the water in the original Roman Baths is unsafe for bathing, both because of contamination from the ancient lead pipes and because of dangerous microbes in the water. Happily, a mere block away, Thermae Bath Spa offers a safe — and luxurious — alternative. I spent a couple of hours enjoying the spring-fed mineral water pools (one on the rooftop!), trying out sauna and steam rooms, cooling down under a rainfall shower, reclining on a tiled lounge chair in a darkened room to watch a mesmerizing video of astronomical phenomena, and topping it all off with a terrific massage. Taking these waters may not cure leprosy, but it certainly restores the spirits! Make a reservation.

One last word about lead: by the 17th century, said guide Diana, lead was so ubiquitous that it was impossible to avoid. It was used not only in plumbing and paint, but also in cosmetics and even — strange to say — as a sweetener! (I find this last hard to imagine, but apparently one of the reasons that children eat lead paint chips is because they taste sweet.) Diana suggested that one reason why drinking Bath’s waters was thought to be curative was because the water that came directly from the spring was pure. Lead poisoning affects the nervous system and the gastrointestinal system, and drinking these pure waters may have helped to counter some of its systemic damage.