Twitter and other easily accessible means of online communication have encouraged the public to believe that Their Voice Will Be Heard. When it isn’t, they express their frustration through abuse and threats or by blocking roads. In this way, the mentality of the ancient curse-tablet lives on.
In the ancient world, the purpose of the curse was to ‘bind’ the person you disliked — i.e. frustrate them from achieving the end they wanted and you did not. It was written on a thin lead plate, rolled up tight, sometimes twisted (to ‘hobble’ the victim) and pinned (to constrain him), then placed into the tomb of someone who had died before their time. The belief was that the dead man, resentful of his early demise, would be happy to enact the curse against the named victim.
The curse, composed in a terrifying formulaic language, might be designed to prevent a chariot team from winning a race, a lawyer or politician from gaining their ends, a competing trader from selling more goods, or someone running off with a beloved boy or woman.
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