Poseidon's gift, Theseus's curse

Several characters in the Hippolytus, including two goddesses, refer to the gift of three wishes/prayers/curses [ἀρά] promised to Theseus by Poseidon. This list is relevant to the next post.


Aphrodite
the young man who wars against me shall be killed by his father with the curses the sea-lord [45] Poseidon granted as a gift to Theseus: three times may Theseus pray to the god and have his prayer fulfilled.

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Theseus
But, father Poseidon, with one of the three curses you once promised me kill my son, and may he not live out [890] this day, if indeed you have granted me curses I may rely on.

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Theseus
Who killed him? Did someone have a quarrel with him [1165] whose wife he ravished as he did his father's?

Messenger
His own chariot destroyed him, and the curses of your mouth which you uttered against your son to your father, lord of the sea.

Theseus
stretching out his arms, palm upwards, in prayer
Merciful gods! So you were after all truly my father, Poseidon, [1170] since you have heard my prayer. How did he perish? Tell me, how did Zeus's cudgel strike him for dishonoring me?

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Messenger

All was confounded: the wheels' naves [1235] and the axle-pins were leaping into the air, and the poor man himself, entangled in the reins, bound in a bond not easy to untie, was dragged along, smashing his head against the rocks and rending his flesh and uttering things dreadful to hear: [1240] ‘Stay, horses my mangers have nourished, do not blot me out! O wretched curse of my father! Who wishes to stand by the best of men and save his life?’

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Theseus

[1265] Bring him so that I may look him in the face, the man who denies he violated my bed, and with my words and with the misfortunes sent by the gods give him the lie.

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Artemis

Do you know that you possess three reliable (or clear)

curses from your father? One of these you took, base man, to use against your son when you could have used it against an enemy. Your father, the sea-lord, kindly disposed as he was towards you, granted what he had to grant seeing that he had made this promise. [1320] 

ἆρ᾽ οἶσθα πατρὸς τρεῖς ἀρὰς ἔχων σαφεῖς;
ὧν τὴν μίαν παρεῖλες, ὦ κάκιστε σύ,
ἐς παῖδα τὸν σόν, ἐξὸν εἰς ἐχθρόν τινα.

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Hippolytus

O pain, o pain! Wretched man that I am, how mutilated I am by the unjust words of an unjust father! [1350] 

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Hippolytus

O wretched curse of my father! [1378]

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Hippolytus

Poseidon your father's gifts, what woe they brought! [1411]

Theseus

Would they had never come into my mouth!

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Artemis

But you, child of old Aegeus, take your son in your arms and embrace him. For you were not responsible for killing him, and when the gods so send, it is understandable that men make fatal errors. [1435]

A curse tablet in Jerusalem

Speaking of curses and charmed language: 1,700 years ago, a tablet in Jerusalem called upon a motley assortment of gods to curse Iennyes:

A lead curse tablet, dating back around 1,700 years and likely written by a magician, has been discovered in a collapsed Roman mansion in Jerusalem, archaeologists report. 

The mansion, which is being excavated by the Israel Antiquities Authority in the Givati Parking Lot, is located in what is known as the "City of David," an area that holds at least 6,000 years of human occupation. The mansion itself covers at least 2,000 square meters (about half an acre) and contains two large open courtyards adjacent to each other. It was in use between the late third century and A.D. 363, when it was destroyed in a series of earthquakes on May 18 or 19. 

The text is written in Greek and, in it a woman named Kyrilla invokes the names of six gods to cast a curse on a man named Iennys, apparently over a legal case. [See Photos of the Ancient Curse Tablet]

"I strike and strike down and nail down the tongue, the eyes, the wrath, the ire, the anger, the procrastination, the opposition of Iennys," part of the curse reads in translation. Kyrilla asks the gods to ensure that "he in no way oppose, so that he say or perform nothing adverse to Kyrilla … but rather that Iennys, whom the womb bore, be subject to her…" 

To obtain her goal Kyrilla combined elements from four religions, Robert Walter Daniel, of the Institut für Altertumskunde at the University of Cologne, told LiveScience in an email. Of six gods invoked, four of them are Greek (Hermes, Persephone, Pluto and Hecate), one is Babylonian (Ereschigal) and one, Abrasax, is Gnostic, a religion connected to early Christianity. Additionally, the text contains magic words such as "Iaoth" that have a Hebrew/Judaism origin.