Note 156 — Chapter V · THE CULT OF SOULS

αἱ διωμοσίαι καὶ τὰ τόμια, Antiphon, Herod. 88. In more detail D. 23, 67–8. Those who had to take an oath swore by the Σεμναὶ θεαί and other gods: Dinarch., adv. Demosth. 47. Both sides had to swear to the justice of their case in respect of the material facts in dispute (Philippi, Areop., pp. 87–95). Such a compulsory oath taken by both parties could not of course in any circumstances serve as proof: one side at least must be perjured. Nor can the Athenians themselves have failed to see this. It is surely doing them an injustice not to see the simple explanation of this strange sort of preliminary oath-taking and to dismiss the matter with a reference to the Athenians as “not a legally-minded people” (as Philippi does, p. 88). It is much more natural to suppose that this double oath, taken under circumstances of peculiar solemnity, was not regarded as a juridical matter at all, but had a purely religious sense (as it had in the quite similar cases mentioned by Meiners, Allg. Gesch. d. Relig. ii, 296 f.). The oath-taker invokes a dreadful curse upon himself if he breaks his oath and devotes αὑτὸν καὶ γένος καὶ οἰκίαν τὴν αὑτοῦ (Antiphon, Herod. 11) to the Curse-Goddesses, the Ἀραί or the Ἐρινύες αἵ θ’ ὑπὸ γαῖαν ἀνθρώπους τίνυνται, ὅτις κ’ ἐπίορκον ὀμόσσῃ (Τ 259 f.)—and to the Gods who are to punish his children and his whole kith and kin on earth (Lycurg., Leocr. 79). If the court discovers the perjured party the punishment due to his action overtakes him (or if he is the plaintiff, he fails in his purpose) and at the same time the justice of heaven punishes him for his broken oath (cf. D. 23, 68). But the court may make a mistake and not find out the perjurer; in which case the perjurer is still punished for he becomes a victim of the gods to whom he has devoted himself—who do not err. Thus the double oath is an addition to the judicial inquiry, and heavenly punishment stands side by side with that of men. The two may coincide, but this need not be so, and in this way the guilty is punished whatever happens. (How familiar such ideas were in antiquity we see from expressions used by orators: Isoc. 18, 3; D. 19, 239–40; Lycurg., Leocr. 79.) The oath, being an appeal to a higher court, supplemented human justice, or rather the legal processes of men supplemented the oath-taking, for in this partnership the appeal to an oath must have been the older member.