Table Of ContentHORKOS
The Oath in Greek Society
What was an oath? When were oaths necessary? How seriously were oaths
taken? How did literary artists exploit them? How did Greek oath practices
relate to those of neighbouring cultures?
This volume derives from a large-scale ongoing research project funded
by the Leverhulme Trust on the oath in ancient Greece, and comprises
seventeen chapters by experts in law, in political and social history, in literary
criticism, and in cross-cultural studies, exploring a wide range of aspects of
the oath in Greek society.
Topics covered include the nature of ancient Greek oaths; the functions
they performed within communities and in relations between them; their
exploitation in literary texts and at critical moments in history; and connec
tions between Greek oath phenomena and those of other cultures with
which Greeks came into contact, from the Hittites to the Romans.
This book will be of interest not only to scholars of classics and ancient
history, but to their colleagues working in the fields of ancient Greek reli
gion, law, social studies and literature.
Editors: Alan Sommerstein is Professor of Greek at the University of
Nottingham and Director of the 'Oath in Archaic and Classical Greece'
project He has published widely on Aeschylus, Aristophanes and other
Greek dramatists. Judith Fletcher is Associate Professor of Archaeology and
Classical Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, and cer
editor with Bonnie MacLachlan of Viiginity Revisited: The Autonomy of the
UnpossesseBd ody (2006).
HORKOS
The Oath in Greek Society
edited by
Alan H. Sommerstei,n
and
Judith F'letcher
BRISTOL
PHOENIX
PRESS
First published in 2007 by
Bristol Phoenix Press
an imprint of The Exeter Press
Reed Hall, Streatham Drive
Exeter EX4 4QR
UK
www.exeterpress.cuok .
© 2007 Alan H. Sommerstein,Judith Fletcher and the individual contributors
The right of Alan H. Sommerstein,Judith Fletcher
and the individual contributors to be identified
as authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Acts 1988.
British Libnry Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
ISBN 978 I 904675 67 9
Typeset in New Baskerville by XL Publishing Services, Tiverton
Printed in Great Britain by Athenaeum Press Ltd, Gateshead, Tyne & Wear
CONTENTS
Preface
VII
Notes on Contributors
IX
Introduction (Alan H. Sommerstein) 1
Part I: Oaths and their Uses
J.
1 Oaths in political life (P Rhodes) 11
2 Oaths in Greek international relations (Sarah &lmarcich) 26
3 Litigants' oaths in Athenian law (Michael Gagarin) 39
4 The dikast's oath and the question of fact (David C. Mirhady) 48
5 Could a Greek oath guarantee a claim right? Oaths, contracts and
the strtucture of obligation in classical Athens (David Carter) 60
6 Oath and contract (Edwin M. Carawan) 73
7 'An Olympic victory must not be bought': oath-taking,
cheating and women in Greek athletics (Jonathan S. Perry) 81
Part Il: Case Studies
8 Epinician swearing (Bonnie MacLachlan) 91
9 Horkos in the Oresteia( Judith FI.etcher) 102
10 Masters of manipulation: Euripides' (and Medea's) use of oaths
in Medea (Arlene Allan) 113
11 Cloudy swearing: when (if ever) is an oath not an oath?
(Alan H. Sommerstein) 125
12 Thucydides and Plataian perjury (Simon Hornblower) 138
13 The oath of Demophantos and the politics of Athenian
identity (Julia L. Shear) 148
vi Horkos
14 Hierophantic performances: the Syracusans' Great Oath
and other examples (Tarilr. Wareh) 161
m:
Part From East, to West
15 Oath and allusion in Alcaeus fr. 129 (Mary R. BachvaT<JVa) 179
16 Cosmological oaths in Empedocles and Lucretius (Myrto Caram) 189
17 'Oµweu auTOVT OVIe ~aOTOV['I swear by Augustus himself]:
The Greek oath in the Roman world ( Serena Connolly) 203
Notes 217
Bibliography 270
General Index 293
Index Locorum 297
PREFACE
This volume originated, as is explained in the Introduction, from a confer
ence on 'The Oath in Greek Society' held at Nightingale Hall, University of
Nottingham, from 30 June to 2July 2004. We are happy to acknowledge again
the contribution of all who helped to create the conference and make this
volume possible. In particular, no praise can be too high for SheilaJones,
secretary of the University's Humanities Research Centre, who managed
every administrative aspect of the conference with incredible patience and
efficiency, with the help, at the crunch moments, of two postgraduate
students, Dee Scally and Giulia Torello, and, throughout, of the staff of
Nightingale Hall. We also gladly acknowledge the support of the Society for
the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, who made it possible for the conference
to have our bursary scheme for young researchers and thereby facilitated
the attendance of eight delegates, four of whom are contributors to this
volume; of the University of Nottingham Research Committee, whose grant
enabled us to reduce the cost of attending for all young researchers; and of
the University's Department of Classics, which both encouraged and
financed participation by its own staff and students. Three more individuals
who deserve particular mention are John Rich, Head of the Department at
the time of the conference and now Head of the School of Humanities, who
encouraged Alan Sommerstein to conceive and plan the major research
project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, to which the conference was a
curtain-raiser, and Peter Elford and Jennifer Edmond-then, but sadly not
now, on the staff of the Humanities Research Centre-but for whose advice
that project would not have secured funding and the conference, while it
would still have taken place, might have taken place in something of a
vacuum. Our thanks must also go to John Betts for offering to publish the
volume, to Anna Henderson for her thoughtfulness as the publishers' editor,
VII
Horkos
Vlll
and to Andrew Bayliss, one of the project research fellows, who found us an
image for our cover. Judith Fletcher would like to thank her student research
assistants: David Stark and Erika Nitsch. She is also grateful to the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for funding
and to Wilfrid Laurier University for teaching relief.
Alan H. Sommerstein
Judith Fletcher
Nottingham I Waterloo, April 2007
CONTRIBUTORS
Arlene Allan is a Lecturer in Classics at the University of Otago. Her publi
cations include A Guide to Ancient GreekD rama (2005), co-authored with Ian
C. Storey, and several articles. She is currently working on a study of the
manifestations of Hermes in Greek drama.
Mary R. Bachvarova received her Ph.D. in the History of Culture from the
University of Chicago in 2002. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the
Classical Studies Program at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. She
studies the East Mediterranean as a cultural area, and the prehistory of Greek
religion and literature, focusing on the formative period of the second
millennium BCE and cultural contact in Anatolia.
Sarah Bolmarcich completed her Ph.D. work on Thucydides and fifth
century Athenian diplomacy at the University ofVirginia in 2003. She is now
writing a book on the topic. She has served as a Fulbright Fellow at the
American School of Classical Studies in Athens, and is now teaching at the
University of Texas at Austin.
Edwin Carawan is Professor of Classical Languages at Missouri State
University, where he has taught since 1985. His publications include Rhetoric
and the Law ofDraco (1998) and recent articles on Sophocles (A]P 1999 and
TAPA 2000) and on the Athenian Amnesty (/HS 2002, CQforthcoming). He
is currently editing a collection of essays for the Oxford Readings series, The
Jacoby.
Attic Orators,w hile serving as a contributing editor to BriU'sN ew
David Carter is Lecturer in Greek at the University of Reading. His book,
The Politics of GreekT ragedy,i s forthcoming with Bristol Phoenix Press.
ix
Horkos
X
Serena Connolly is Lecturer in Classics at Yale University, where she received
her Ph.D. in 2004. She has written articles on law at Dura-Europos and on
Roman slavery, and is currently preparing for publication a monograph on
the Codex Hermogenianusa nd its value for social historians.
Judith Fletcher is Associate Professor in the Department of Archaeology and
Classical Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. Her
publications include articles and chapters on Greek drama, epic and the clas
sical tradition. She is co-editor of Virginity Revisited: um.figurations of the
UnpossessedB ody( University of Toronto, forthcoming), and Associate Editor
of Phoenix. She holds a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada research grant for a project on Oaths and Perjury in Classical Greek
Poetrya nd Drama.
Michael Gagarin is the James R Dougherty, Jr. Centennial Professor of
Classics at the University of Texas. He has written widely in the areas of Greek
law, rhetoric, literature, and philosophy, including DraJwna nd EarlyA thenian
Homicide Law (1981), Early GreekL aw (1986), The Murder of Herodes (1989)
and Antiphon the Athenian: Oratory, Law and justice in the Age of the Sophists
(2002); he is the co-editor (with David Cohen) of The CambridgeC ompanion
to Ancient GreekL aw (2005).
Myrto Garani [Gkarani] completed her Ph.D. at King's College London in
2005 and now teaches Latin at the University of Patras, Greece. She is
currently turning her thesis Poetrya nd Analogy inEmpedoclesa nd Lucretiusi nto
a book. She is particularly interested in the reception of Empedocles in Latin
Literature, the presence of (Neo)pythagoreanism and Orphism in Rome,
the use of metaphors in philosophical and scientific discourse, and the rela
tionship between poetry and philosophy.
Simon Hornblower is Professor of Classics and Ancient History at UCL. His
books include The GreekW orld 479-323 BC (1983; 3rd ed. 2002), and a large
scale commentary on Thucydides (two volumes published so far, 1991 and
1996; the third and final volume is in progress). He was co-editor of the new
(3rd) edition of the Oxford ClassicalD ictionary (1996) and of GreekP ersonal
Names: Their Value as Evidence (2002). His latest book is Thucydidesa nd Pindar:
HistoricalN arrative and the World of Epinikian Poetry( 2004).
Bonnie Macl.achlan has taught in the Classical Studies Department of the
University of Western Ontario since 1989. With Robert Wallace she co
authored Harmonia Mundi ( 1991), a book on Greek and Roman music and
philosophy. In 1993 she published The Age of Grace.C harisinEarly GreekP oetry,
and is currently co-editing with Judith Fletcher a book on virginity. She has
published articles on Greek lyric poetry and religion, and is currently
