Broken Mirror Curse Almost everyone has heard that breaking a mirror dooms you to seven years of bad luck. This curse has its origins in Ancient Rome. The Romans believed that the human soul would renew every seven years, repairing whatever damage they had suffered during that time. They also thought that a mirror’s reflection was a way to look into the soul. If you break a mirror, you break apart your soul, which would have to go through a 7-year cycle to renew. Until your soul achieves renewal, you would endure misfortune because of your broken soul.
Roman Curse Tablets Romans used lead tablets inscribed with a variety of curses in a number of ways in ancient Rome. One of their uses was to elicit help from the dead. Many Roman graves contain these tablets. Usually, they were asking for help from a particular deity to get revenge on someone by having that deity bestow malfeasance or misfortune upon them. In return, the person writing the message would promise to make offerings at their temple.
Curse Dolls Much like the infamous Voodoo dolls, ancient Romans would use miniature dolls as effigies of their targets to instill curses upon them. They sometimes used curse dolls in conjunction with a curse tablet, and other times used dolls by themselves. The dolls were generally lead or bronze.
Dido’s Curse upon Troy From Rome’s storied mythological heroes, the curse on Aeneas by his once-lover Dido is one of the most famous in Roman lore. According to legend, Aeneas was the son of the Trojan prince Anchises and the goddess Venus. He was a legendary hero of the Trojan war as well as an ancestor of Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome. He is considered the first true hero of Roman folklore.