Prayer to Mother Earth and the Manes

The epitaph of Maximiana Aemilia from Siscia in Upper Pannonia, third century. Of all the funerary texts in this corpus it is the only one in which the dead woman lodges a complaint.

She speaks herself, in the first person, and speaks to the powers below: "you then, gods of the underworld, to whom the gods above have driven me headlong — receive me with the least torment". The order of thought is astonishing. The gods above are named as culpable: it was they who pushed her down, and praecipitem, headlong, denotes not death in general but violent haste. The gods below are not at fault; they are merely the receiving party, and are addressed almost sympathetically.

This is a transfer of suit: complaining about the upper gods to the upper gods is useless, and the injured party applies to another jurisdiction — the one she has been sent to. The same manoeuvre as in the British curse tablet (neptunus-007), where a robbed man reassigns his case to Neptune.

Minimo cum tormento — with the least torment. Not "without torment": what is asked is not deliverance but mitigation. Torment is assumed to be unavoidable, and the bargaining is over the amount.