August - 2025

The Uley Tablets - Roman Curse Tablets from the Temple of Mercury at Uley (Oxford University Press, 400 pages, $210, 2024), by Roger S. O. Tomlin, is the first complete publication of the curse tablets from the Temple of Mercury at Uley, England. Written primarily in Latin, these inscriptions appeal to the god for justice for stolen goods, such as animals, rings, money, and even underwear. The curse tablets are a unique source on daily life in Roman Britain, revealing everyday concerns, social structures, and literacy levels outside of urban centers—which is indicative of the uses of these tablets by different social classes. The book includes transcriptions and translations of the tablets, as well as illustrations (photographs and drawings) and detailed commentaries, in addition to introductory chapters that contextualize the texts, addressing language, calligraphy, religious practices, and literacy in Britain.

Trabalho e economia nos santos padres (transl. D. H. Moser, Aparecida, Editora Santuário, 2024, 160 pages, R$ 45) brings together writings by Jean-Marie Salamito, composed between 1996 and 2009, on how the Church Fathers conceived of economics and labor. In the four chapters, Salamito addresses the foundations and methods of how patristic authors engaged with discussions of the Greco-Roman tradition on the valuation and classification of manual and wage labor and how they addressed the issue of enslavement. Through analyses of the religious ethics debated by authors such as Ambrose, Augustine, and Gregory the Great, among others, Salamito foregrounds not only the categories, perceptions, and valuations of work that were used, but also highlights socioeconomic relationships and processes articulated with the living conditions of subalternized individuals that such texts allow us to observe.