The Socio-Religious Aspects of Oath-Taking in Early to Classical Greece

Abstract

We are told Chiron "first brought justice to the race of men, revealing to them oaths, the fair sacrifices, and the characteristics of heaven"; Pythagoras supposedly said that "the oath is justice, and that is why Zeus is called Horkios"; in his speech against Leocrates Lycurgus informs us that "what holds democracy together is the oath." This is a selection of some of the few comments which explicitly draw attention to the importance of a social practice which, although pervasive throughout Greek society, is for the most part mentioned only in passing. Unlike two other major social institutions, xenia (guest-friendship), which is a guiding theme in the Odyssey, and hiketeia (supplication), the subject of surviving plays by both Aeschylus and Euripides, no work of literature survives in which oaths or oath-taking are in the foreground. Not too many people would attribute the sack of Troy to the breaking of the oaths in Book 4 of the Iliad. The importance of oath-taking in early Greece may be explained from a number of perspectives, none of which can claim any substantial priority over the others.