{
 "schema": 1,
 "id": "bulla",
 "type": "amulet",
 "names": {
  "name": "Bulla",
  "native": "bulla",
  "script": "Latin",
  "lang": "la",
  "said": "BUL-la, plural bullae",
  "aliases": [
   "bulla aurea",
   "Roman boy's locket"
  ]
 },
 "region": [
  "rome-italy"
 ],
 "countries": [
  "IT"
 ],
 "facets": {
  "era": "classical",
  "status": "archaeological",
  "portable": "worn",
  "restricted": "limited",
  "hemisphere": [
   "N",
   "E"
  ]
 },
 "text": {
  "what": "A locket on a neckchain: a round hollow pouch with something shut inside it, usually a phallus. What it was made of tracked the family's money — gold or gold foil at the top, lead, leather or cloth further down. It was given to a freeborn Roman boy nine days after he was born and he wore it until he stopped being a boy.",
  "story": "The bulla has an end date built into it. Before a young man put on the toga virilis, the toga of manhood, he handed his boyhood bulla to the household's Lares, the family's own gods, and it stayed with them. The girls' version, the lunula, came off on the eve of a wedding, together with her childhood toys.\n\nWho could wear one was not open. The bulla marks a freeborn Roman boy and a Roman citizen in the making; the object and the status are the same statement. Some modern readers take a single line in Macrobius about an amulet worn by a general in his triumph as evidence that the childhood bulla was also standard triumphal regalia. The cited account reports that reading without endorsing it, and so does this record.\n\n*Tradition holds —* the amulet inside was usually a phallus, a shape the cited account calls a bringer of good luck in antiquity. The container is the interesting part. The protection is real enough to be worth wearing and private enough to be shut in a case: nobody is meant to see what is working.\n\nIreland has bullae too, and they are not these. A small number of Late Bronze Age objects, roughly 1150 to 750 BCE, are called bullae because they look like the Roman ones — base metal or clay under a folded-over sheet of gold foil, incised with geometry, hung round the neck by a cord through a hole below the flat top. Whether they were ornament, amulet or something else is unclear, and that is why Ireland does not appear in this record's country list."
 },
 "dating": {
  "period": "Roman",
  "from_year": -299,
  "to_year": 399,
  "living": false,
  "label": "Roman antiquity",
  "method": "textual",
  "circa": true,
  "tier": "inference",
  "source": "s:wp-bulla-amulet",
  "note": "The cited article gives no attestation range for the Roman bulla. Its dated anchors are Plautus in the 3rd–2nd century BCE and Macrobius around 400 CE. The Irish bullae, a separate class, are dated in the article to about 1150–750 BCE."
 },
 "object": {
  "form": "box",
  "materials": [
   "gold",
   "lead",
   "leather",
   "cloth"
  ],
  "worn": [
   "neck",
   "chest"
  ],
  "made_by": "worn only by freeborn Roman boys, from the ninth day after birth until the toga virilis",
  "inscription": "",
  "script": "Latin",
  "single_use": false,
  "source": "s:wp-bulla-amulet",
  "note": "The amulet inside is the working part; the bulla is the container. No published measurement was read."
 },
 "against": [
  {
   "harm": "child-harm",
   "who": "Roman practice: the bulla was given nine days after birth and worn through boyhood",
   "source": "s:wp-bulla-amulet",
   "tier": "cited"
  },
  {
   "harm": "bad-luck",
   "who": "the cited account, which describes the phallus inside as a symbol that brought good luck in antiquity",
   "source": "s:wp-bulla-amulet",
   "tier": "cited"
  },
  {
   "harm": "evil-eye",
   "who": "Pliny, on the phallic charm the bulla usually contained",
   "source": "s:wp-fascinus",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": "filed from the contents, not from the case; the bulla article itself names good luck rather than the eye"
  }
 ],
 "kin": [
  {
   "to": "lunula",
   "as": "the girls' counterpart, worn until the eve of the wedding instead of until the toga virilis",
   "rel": "parallel"
  },
  {
   "to": "fascinum",
   "as": "what was usually inside it — this record is the box, that one is the charm",
   "rel": "part"
  },
  {
   "to": "greco-roman-apotropaic",
   "as": "the tradition, and its clearest case of an amulet that marks legal status as much as it guards",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "to": "wearing-hidden",
   "as": "the practice this object is built around: the working part is shut in a case and never seen",
   "rel": "practice"
  },
  {
   "to": "gold",
   "as": "the material at the top of the range; lead, leather and cloth did the same job for families who could not buy gold",
   "rel": "material"
  },
  {
   "to": "most-of-them-are-for-children",
   "as": "the long read; a Roman boy got his on day nine and gave it up at manhood",
   "rel": "story"
  },
  {
   "to": "azabache",
   "as": "the same idea in Spanish and Latin American hands — a charm put on an infant at once, against the same look",
   "rel": "parallel"
  }
 ],
 "confusable_with": [
  {
   "id": "lunula",
   "tell": "a bulla is a round hollow case with something inside; a lunula is a solid crescent with nothing inside it"
  }
 ],
 "links": [
  {
   "label": "Bulla (amulet) — Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulla_(amulet)"
  }
 ],
 "sources": [
  "s:wp-bulla-amulet",
  "s:wp-lunula-amulet",
  "s:wp-fascinus",
  "s:wp-amulet"
 ],
 "provenance": {
  "default": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-bulla-amulet"
  },
  "fields": {
   "dating": {
    "tier": "inference",
    "note": "no attestation range is published in the cited article; see dating.note"
   }
  }
 },
 "images": [],
 "x_commons_files": [
  "File:Roman bulla gold.jpg"
 ],
 "confidence": "medium",
 "needs_verification": true,
 "updated": "2026-09-16",
 "blurb": "A locket on a neckchain: a round hollow pouch with something shut inside it, usually a phallus. What it was made of tracked the family's money — gold or gold foil at the top, lead, leather or cloth further down.",
 "region_terms": [
  {
   "key": "rome-italy",
   "name": "Rome and Italy",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "E"
   ]
  }
 ],
 "hemispheres": [
  "E",
  "N"
 ],
 "kin_out": [
  {
   "to": "lunula",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Lunula",
   "as": "the girls' counterpart, worn until the eve of the wedding instead of until the toga virilis",
   "rel": "parallel"
  },
  {
   "to": "fascinum",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Fascinum",
   "as": "what was usually inside it — this record is the box, that one is the charm",
   "rel": "part"
  },
  {
   "to": "greco-roman-apotropaic",
   "type": "tradition",
   "name": "Greek and Roman protective magic",
   "as": "the tradition, and its clearest case of an amulet that marks legal status as much as it guards",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "to": "wearing-hidden",
   "type": "practice",
   "name": "Wearing hidden",
   "as": "the practice this object is built around: the working part is shut in a case and never seen",
   "rel": "practice"
  },
  {
   "to": "gold",
   "type": "material",
   "name": "Gold",
   "as": "the material at the top of the range; lead, leather and cloth did the same job for families who could not buy gold",
   "rel": "material"
  },
  {
   "to": "most-of-them-are-for-children",
   "type": "story",
   "name": "Most of them are for children",
   "as": "the long read; a Roman boy got his on day nine and gave it up at manhood",
   "rel": "story"
  },
  {
   "to": "azabache",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Azabache",
   "as": "the same idea in Spanish and Latin American hands — a charm put on an infant at once, against the same look",
   "rel": "parallel"
  }
 ],
 "source_list": [
  {
   "id": "s:wp-bulla-amulet",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Bulla (amulet)",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulla_(amulet)",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-lunula-amulet",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Lunula (amulet)",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunula_(amulet)",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-fascinus",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Fascinus",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascinus",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-amulet",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Amulet",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amulet",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  }
 ],
 "tiers": {
  "text.what": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-bulla-amulet"
  },
  "text.story": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-bulla-amulet"
  },
  "dating": {
   "tier": "inference",
   "note": "no attestation range is published in the cited article; see dating.note"
  },
  "object": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-bulla-amulet"
  }
 },
 "primary_image": null,
 "tag_facts": [],
 "recognition_facts": [],
 "acclaim": 0,
 "against_facts": [
  {
   "key": "child-harm",
   "label": "Harm to a child",
   "gloss": "harm to an infant or a small child; common across the atlas, though not the largest class in it — see /story/most-of-them-are-for-children/",
   "who": "Roman practice: the bulla was given nine days after birth and worn through boyhood",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-bulla-amulet",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": ""
  },
  {
   "key": "bad-luck",
   "label": "Bad luck, unspecified",
   "who": "the cited account, which describes the phallus inside as a symbol that brought good luck in antiquity",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-bulla-amulet",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": ""
  },
  {
   "key": "evil-eye",
   "label": "The evil eye",
   "gloss": "harm carried by a look, often an admiring one",
   "who": "Pliny, on the phallic charm the bulla usually contained",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-fascinus",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": "filed from the contents, not from the case; the bulla article itself names good luck rather than the eye"
  }
 ],
 "material_facts": [
  {
   "key": "gold",
   "label": "Gold",
   "kind": "metal"
  },
  {
   "key": "lead",
   "label": "Lead",
   "kind": "metal"
  },
  {
   "key": "leather",
   "label": "Leather and hide",
   "kind": "organic"
  },
  {
   "key": "cloth",
   "label": "Cloth",
   "kind": "textile"
  }
 ],
 "worn_facts": [
  {
   "key": "neck",
   "label": "At the neck",
   "group": "body",
   "note": "the world's default position"
  },
  {
   "key": "chest",
   "label": "On the chest, under the shirt",
   "group": "body"
  }
 ],
 "form_fact": {
  "key": "box",
  "label": "Box or reliquary"
 },
 "holding_facts": [],
 "span": "300 BCE – 399 CE",
 "country_names": [
  {
   "iso": "IT",
   "name": "Italy"
  }
 ],
 "kin_in": [
  {
   "from": "fascinum",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Fascinum",
   "as": "the locket a Roman boy wore, with one of these usually inside it",
   "rel": "whole"
  },
  {
   "from": "lunula",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Lunula",
   "as": "the boys' counterpart, and the object Isidore defines this one against",
   "rel": "parallel"
  },
  {
   "from": "greco-roman-apotropaic",
   "type": "tradition",
   "name": "Greek and Roman protective magic",
   "as": "what a Roman boy wore, from day nine to the toga virilis",
   "rel": "part"
  },
  {
   "from": "crescent",
   "type": "motif",
   "name": "The crescent",
   "as": "the boy's locket, given at birth where the girl got this; the pair is the clearest gendered split in Roman charms",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "from": "phallic-sign",
   "type": "motif",
   "name": "The phallus",
   "as": "the locket a Roman boy wore, which is where a phallus was often put",
   "rel": "kin"
  },
  {
   "from": "gold",
   "type": "material",
   "name": "Gold",
   "as": "gold for the families that could pay for gold, lead and leather for the rest — the same charm, sorted by price",
   "rel": "carried-by"
  },
  {
   "from": "grave-deposit",
   "type": "practice",
   "name": "Grave deposit",
   "as": "the counter-case: a Roman boy's charm went to the household gods at manhood, not into the ground",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "from": "inheriting",
   "type": "practice",
   "name": "Inheriting",
   "as": "the counter-case: handed to the household gods at manhood rather than to an heir",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "from": "most-of-them-are-for-children",
   "type": "story",
   "name": "Most of them are for children",
   "as": "the Roman case with a date on it — put on a boy nine days after birth, and taken off at manhood",
   "rel": "carries"
  }
 ]
}