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the program. Hello the importance of oaths in the classical world can't be overstated.

Kings, citizens, soldiers, litigants, all swore

oaths inviting divine retribution if they proved false to their word. Oaths cemented peace

treaties, they obliged the Athenian citizenry to protect their democracy,

they guaranteed the loyalty of the Roman army to its emperor, and they underpinned the legal

systems of Athens and Rome. And in Homer's epic poem, The Iliad, it's a broken oath to settle the

dispute between Menelaire and Paris that leaves the Greeks to storm Troy in pursuit of

Helen. But how did the classical world come to understand the oath? Why did oaths come to

occupy such a central place in the political, social and legal life of the Athenian state and what

role did oath-making play in the expanding Roman Empire.

With me to discuss the oath is Mary Beard, Professor in Classics at the University of Cambridge,

Alan Summerstein, Professor of Greek at the University of Nottingham, and Paul Cartilage, Professor of Greek History at the University of Nottingham and Paul Cartilage

Professor of Greek History at the University of Cambridge.

Alan Summerstein, you say that an oath can best be understood as a conditional self-curse.

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