What would a Roman want to achieve with writing inscriptions and magical signs on bronze nails? I was strolling through the Wikipedia page on bronze and found a picture of bronze nails from Roman times. Under the picture is a text saying > Roman bronze nails with magical signs and inscriptions, 3rd-4th century AD What would a Roman want to achieve with these writings? I know they sometimes used nails on a curse tablet, is there a source describing these practices and their reasoning? The Wikipedia page on Curse Tablets only makes mentions of nails being used to pierce said tablets but not that they themselves are used like a tablet.

I suggest you take a look at Nails for the dead: a polysemic account of an ancient funerary practice by Silvia Alfayé. The paper focuses on the use of nails in Roman funerary practices, but in section 3 she offers a nice overview on the ritual/magical uses of nails in general, including the inscribed bronze nails you are asking about, which she describes as:

> These are the so-called _chiodi magici_ , which are 10–20cm long, made of bronze or iron, decorated with geometrical patterns, sigla and/or _charakteres_ , and show no signs of wear.

She then lists various possible uses which have been suggested for them: as tools of divination, as votive objects, as amulets. It is even suggested that some of them were used to cure epilepsy, using a technique cited by Pliny, or that they were just more sophisticated versions of simpler, non-inscribed funerary nails.