Horkos The Oath in Greek Society

by Sommerstein, Alan; Fletcher, Judith

• ISBN13: 9781904675679
• ISBN10: 1904675670
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-01-23
• Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Summary

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? The importance of oaths to ancient Greek culture can hardly be overstated, especially in the political and judicial fields; they have never, however, been the object of a comprehensive, systematic study. This volume derives from a research project on the oath in ancient Greece, and comprises seventeen chapters by experts in law, political and social history, literary criticism, and cross-cultural studies, exploring a wide range of aspects of the subject. 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; connections between Greek oath phenomena and those of other cultures with which Greeks came into contact, from the Hittites to the Romans.

Author Biography

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 co-editor with Bonnie MacLachlan of Virginity Revisited: The Autonomy of the Unpossessed Body (2006).

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Notes on Contributors	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Oaths and their Uses
Oaths in political life	p. 11
Oaths in Greek international relations	p. 26
Litigants' oaths in Athenian law	p. 39
The dikast's oath and the question of fact	p. 48
Could a Greek oath guarantee a claim right? Oaths, contracts and the strtucture of obligation in classical Athens	p. 60
Oath and contract	p. 73
'An Olympic victory must not be bought': oath-taking, cheating and women in Greek athletics	p. 81
Case Studies
Epinician swearing	p. 91
Horkos in the Oresteia	p. 102
Masters of manipulation: Euripides' (and Medea's) use of oaths in Medea	p. 113
Cloudy swearing: when (if ever) is an oath not an oath?	p. 125
Thucydides and Plataian perjury	p. 138
The oath of Demophantos and the politics of Athenian identity	p. 148
Hierophantic performances: the Syracusans' Great Oath and other examples	p. 161
From East, to West
Oath and allusion in Alcaeus fr. 129	p. 179
Cosmological oaths in Empedocles and Lucretius	p. 189
'O[mu nu][Characters not reproducible][omega] [alpha][Characters not reproducible][tau][Characters not reproducible][nu] [tau][Characters not reproducible][nu] [Sigma epsilon beta alpha sigma tau][Characters not reproducible][nu] ['I swear by Augustus himself']: The Greek oath in the Roman world	p. 203
Notes	p. 217
Bibliography	p. 270
General Index	p. 293
Index Locorum	p. 297
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