Description
Book SynopsisThe importance of oaths to ancient Greek culture can hardly be overstated, especially in the political and judicial fields; but they have never 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, in political and social history, in literary criticism, and in cross-cultural studies, exploring the subject from a broad spectrum of positions. 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 connections between Greek oath phenomena and those of other cultures with which Greek came into contact, from the Hittites to the Romans.
Table of Contents
- Introduction (Alan H. Sommerstein)
- Part I: Oaths and their Uses
- 1 Oaths in political life (P.J. Rhodes, University of Durham, UK)
- 2 Oaths in Greek international relations (Sarah Bolmarcich, University of Michigan, USA)
- 3 Litigants' oaths in Athenian law (Michael Gagarin, University of Texas, Austin, USA)
- 4 The dikast's oath (David C. Mirhady, Simon Fraser University, Canada)
- 5 Could a Greek oath guarantee a claim right? (David M. Carter, University of Reading, UK)
- 6 Oath and contract (Edwin M. Carawan, Missouri State University, USA)
- 7 "An Olympic victory must not be bought": oath-taking, cheating and women in Greek athletics (Jonathan S. Perry, University of Central Florida, USA)
- Part II: Case studies
- 8 Epinician swearing (Bonnie MacLachlan, University of Western Ontario, Canada)
- 9 Horkos in the Oresteia (Judith Fletcher, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada)
- 10 Masters of manipulation: Euripides' (and Medea's) use of oaths in Medea (Arlene Allan, University of Otago, New Zealand)
- 11 Cloudy swearing: when is an oath not an oath? (Alan H. Sommerstein, University of Nottingham, UK)
- 12 Thucydides and Plataian perjury (Simon Hornblower, University College London, UK)
- 13 The oath of Demophantos and the politics of Athenian identity (Julia L. Shear, University of Glasgow, UK)
- 14 The Syracusans' great oath and the Greek hierophantic performance (Tarik Wareh, Union College, Schenectady, USA)
- Part III: From East, to West
- 15 Oath and allusion in Alcaeus 129 (Mary R. Bachvarova, Willamette University, USA)
- 16 Cosmological oaths in Empedocles and Lucretius (Myrto Gkarani, University of Patras, Greece)
- 17 "I swear by Augustus himself": the Greek oath in the Roman world (Serena Connolly, Yale University, USA)
