Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/757

OATH 699 a remarkable difference from those of later stages. In the apparently primitive forms the curse on the perjurer is to take effect in this world, as when an African negro swears by his head or limbs, which will wither if he lies ; this kind of oath by the swearer s body is still found in both the Eastern and the Western worlds, and generally with the same implication of evil to fall on the part sworn by. But as nations became more observant, experience must have shown that bears and tigers were as apt to kill truth -tellers as perjurers, and that even the lightning- flash falls without moral discrimination. In the Clouds of Aristophanes, indeed, men have come openly to ridicule such beliefs, the Socrates of the play pointing out that notorious perjurers go unharmed, while Zeus hurls his bolts at his own temple, and the tall oaks, as if an oak- tree could perjure itself. The doctrine of miraculous earthly retribution on the perjurer lasted on in legend, as where Eusebius relates how three villains conspired to bring a false accusation against Narcissus, bishop of Jeru salem, which accusation they confirmed by solemn oath before the church, one wishing that if he swore falsely he might perish by fire, one that he might die of the pesti lence, one that he might lose his eyes ; a spark no man knew from whence burned to ashes the first perjurer s house and all within, the second was consumed by the plague from head to foot, whereupon the third confessed the crime with tears so copious that he lost his sight (Euseb., Hist. Eccl., vi. 9). As a general rule, however, the supernatural retribution on perjury has been transferred from the present world to the regions beyond the grave, as is evident from any collection of customary oaths. A single instance will show at once the combination of retributions in and after the present life, and the tendency to heap up remote penalties in the vain hope of securing present honesty. The Siamese Buddhist in his oath, not content to call down on himself various kinds of death if he breaks it, desires that he may afterwards be cast into hell to go through innumerable tortures, among them to carry water over the flames in a wicker basket to assuage the thirst of the infernal judge, then that he may migrate into the body of a slave for as many years as there are grains of sand in four seas, and after this that he may be born a beast through five hundred generations and an hermaphrodite five hundred more. The forms of oath belonging to all nations and ages, various as they are in detail, come under a few general heads. It may be first observed that gestures such as grasping hands, or putting one hand between the hands of another in token of homage, are sometimes treated as of the nature of oaths, but wrongly so, they being rather of the nature of ceremonies of compact. The Hebrew practice of putting the hand under another s thigh is usually reckoned among oath-rites, but it may have been merely a ceremony of covenant (Gen. xxiv. 2, xlvii. 29 ; see Joseph., Ant., i. 16). Even the covenant among many ancient and modern nations by the parties mixing their blood or drinking one another s is in itself only a solemn rite of union, not an oath proper, unless some such cere mony is introduced as dipping weapons into the blood, as in the form among the ancient Scythians (Herod., iv. 70) ; this, by bringing in the idea of death befalling the cove nant-breaker, converts the proceeding into an oath of the strongest kind. The custom of swearing by weapons, though frequent in the world, is far from consistent in meaning. It may signify, in cases such as those just mentioned, that the swearer if forsworn is to die by such a weapon ; or the warrior may appeal to his weapon as a powerful or divine object, as Parthenopaeus swears by his spear that he will level to the ground the walls of Thebes (/Eschyl., Sept. contra Theb., 530 ; see the custom of the Quadi in Ammian. Marcellin,, xvii.) ; or the weapon may be a divine emblem, as when the Scythians swore by the wind and the sword as denoting life and death (Lucian, Toxaris, 38). Oaths by weapons lasted into the Christian period ; for instance, the Lombards swore lesser oaths by consecrated weapons and greater on the Gospels (see Ducange, s.v. " Juramenta super arma " ; Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterth., p. 896). Stretching forth the hand towards the object or deity sworn by is a natural gesture, well shown in the oath of Agamemnon, who with uplifted hands (Au x e P a? avao"xwv) takes Heaven to witness with Sun and Earth and the Erinnyes who below the earth wreak vengeance on the perjurer (Homer, II., xix. 254 ; see also Pindar, Olymp., vii. 120). The gesture of lift ing the hand towards heaven was also an Israelite form of oath : Abraham says, " I have lifted up my hand to Jehovah," while Jehovah Himself is represented as so swearing, " For I lift up My hand to heaven, and say, I live for ever" (Gen. xiv. 22; Deut. xxxii. 40; see Dan. xii. 7 ; Rev. x. 5). This gesture established itself in Christendom, and has continued to modern times. In England, for example, in the parliament at Shrewsbury in 1398, when the Lords took an oath on the cross of Canterbury never to suffer the transactions of that parlia ment to be changed, the members of the Commons held up their hands to signify their taking upon themselves the same oath (J. E. Tyler, Oat/is, p. 99). In France a juror takes oath by raising his hand, saying, " Je jure ! " The Scottish judicial oath is taken by the witness holding up his right hand uncovered, and repeating after the usher, " I swear by Almighty God, and as I shall answer to God at the great day of judgment, that I will," &c. In the ancient world sacrifice often formed part of the ceremony of the oath ; typical examples may be found in the Homeric poems, as in Agamemnon s oath already mentioned, or the compact between the Greeks and Tro jans (II., iii. 276), where wine is poured out in libation, with prayer to Zeus and the immortal gods that the perjurer s brains shall, like the wine, be poured on the ground ; the rite thus passes into a symbolic curse-oath of the ordinary barbaric type. Connected with such sacri ficial oaths is the practice of laying the hand on the victim or the altar, or touching the image of the god. A classic instance is in a comedy of Plautus (Rudens, v. 2, 45), where Gripus says, "Tange aram hanc Veneris," and Labrax answers "Tango" (Greek instance, Thucyd., v. 47 ; see Justin, xxiv. 2). Thus Livy (xxi. 1) introduces the phrase " touching the sacred objects " (tactis sacris) into the picturesque story of Hannibal s oath. Details of the old Scandinavian oath have been preserved in Iceland in the Landnamab6k (Islendinga Sogur, Copenhagen, 1843) : a bracelet (baugr) of two rings or more was to be kept on the altar in every head court, which the godi or priest should wear at all law-things held by him, and should redden in the blood of the bullock sacrificed, the witness pronouncing the remarkable formula: "Name I to witness that I take oath by the ring, law-oath, so help me Frey, and Niord, and almighty Thor/ (hialpi mer sv4 Freyr, ok Niordr, ok hinn almattki Ass), &c. This was doubtless the great oath on the holy ring or bracelet which the Danes swore to King Alfred to quit his king dom ("on tham halgan beage," Anglo-Sax. Chron. ; "in eorum armilla sacra," Ethelwerd, Chron., iv.). An oath, though not necessarily expressed in words, is usually so. In the Homeric instances the prayer which constitutes the oath has a somewhat conventional form, and in the classical aes we find well-marked formulas. These are often refer ences to deities, as "by Zeus ! " "I call Zeus to witness" (vat fj,a Aia ; to- Zevs) ; " by the immortal gods ! " " I call to witness the ashes of my ancestors " (per deos immor-