The hot spring at Aquae Sulis discharges continuously, and for several centuries people who had been robbed came to it and threw in a message. The messages were written on thin sheets of lead and tin, hammered flat, inscribed with a stylus, then folded or rolled. The excavation of the reservoir in 1979 and 1980 recovered about a hundred and thirty of them, along with thousands of coins and other offerings.
They are extraordinarily consistent in what they are about. Someone has stolen something, usually something small: a cloak taken while its owner was bathing, a pair of gloves, a bracelet, a ploughshare, a quantity of coins. The writer sets out the loss and, in the characteristic move of this deposit, makes the goddess the injured party by handing the stolen property to her. What was a theft from a bather becomes a theft from Sulis Minerva, and it is then her business to act.
The requested action is usually escalating and physical rather than fatal at once. The thief is to lose sleep, health, blood, the ability to eat, until the property comes back. Several tablets list the names of everyone who might have done it and ask the goddess to sort out which. That is not confident accusation. It is a person who does not know who robbed them, using the only investigative procedure available.