root for root into Greek: δκα =Ηλιο ο1 μιν3θει προδεκτου, and the
idea in fact recurs in the early Greek philosophers. Heraclitus (B 94) wrote
that ‘Helios will not overstep his measures; otherwise the Erinyes, Dike’s
police, will track him down’. Parmenides (B 1. 14) stations Dike at the gates of
Day and Night, holding the keys and controlling their alternation.
The practice of invoking the Sun as a witness to oaths is attested widely and
over millennia. In Hittite treaties the Sun-god of heaven, the Sun-goddess of
Arinna, and the Storm-god of heaven head the lengthy list of gods named.
Agamemnon in the Iliad (3. 276 f.), in making a treaty with Priam, calls upon
‘Father Zeus who rulest from Ida, greatest and most glorious, and Helios, who
overseest everything and overhearest everything’. In a later oath (19. 258) he
testifies by Zeus, Ge, Helios, and the Erinyes. When the infant Hermes denies
to Zeus that he has stolen Apollo’s cattle, he insists that he is telling the truth,
saying ‘I am in awe of Helios and the other gods’ (Hymn. Herm. 381). The
chorus in Sophocles’Oedipus Tyrannus (660) swears to Oedipus by Helios
that they wish him no harm. ‘By Helios’ appears frequently as a colloquial
asseveration in New Comedy, and a more explicit ‘I swear by Helios’ a couple
of times. Helios continues to be named in treaties in inscriptions.^17
The Bithynians, as Arrian recorded (ap. Eust. 414. 30), ‘judged cases seated
facing the Sun, so that the god should oversee them’. Movses Xorenac‘i relates
in his Armenian history (2. 19) that ‘when Hyrcanus sought an oath from
Barzap‘ran, he swore to him by the sun and moon and all their cults in heaven
and earth and by the sun of Artashe ̄s and Tigran’.^18 Rostam in the Sha ̄h-na ̄ma
‘swore by his soul and by the king’s head, by the sun and the sword and the
field of battle’.^19
The Franks in the seventh century, although converted to Christianity, still
had the habit of swearing by the Sun.^20 In one of the Norse heroic ballads
Gudrun reproaches Atli (Attila) with ‘the oaths you swore often to Gunnar
and pledged long ago by the Sun southward-curving and by Odin’s crag’.^21
(^17) Cf. L. Preller and C. Robert, Griechische Mythologie, i (4th edn., Berlin 1894), 433 n. 2; West
(1997), 20 f., where some Near Eastern evidence is also cited.
(^18) Trs. R. W. Thomson, Moses Khorenats‘i. History of the Armenians (Cambridge, Mass. 1978).
Cf. 2. 81, ‘my father had sworn to him by the light of the sun’.
(^19) Sha ̄h-na ̄ma, Levy (1967), 205; cf. 106, ‘[Key Khosrow] swore an oath by the all-possessing
Lord, by white day and azure night, by sun and moon, by throne and crown, by seal and sword
and royal diadem’.
(^20) Vita S. Eligii in MGH Scriptores Meroving. iv. 708, nullus dominos solem aut lunam vocet
neque per eos iuret.
(^21) Atlakviða 30. For further Germanic material see J. Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsaltertümer
(4th edn., Leipzig 1899), i. 73, 354, ii. 438–43, 545. Unbegaun (1948), 425, writes of a similar
practice among the west Slavs: ‘La fameuse prestation de serment sur le soleil des nobles
polonais et tchèques, au Moyen Age, semble n’être qu’une coutume d’origine germanique.’
200 5. Sun and Daughter