ὁρκόω, ὁρκωτής, ὁρκίζω
(Phryn. Ecl. 337)

D. General commentary

The subject of this entry of the Eclogue (A.1), although unstated, is the range of technical terms used in Attic legal languageLegal language for the administration of official oathsOaths. Oaths played an important role in Attic lawsuits (see e.g. C.3), in Athens’ relation with allies (see e.g. C.2 and C.4), and more generally in interstate relations (see e.g. C.5: discussions of these judicial and political functions of oaths are offered in the volumes by MacDowell 1986 and Sommerstein, Bayliss 2013). Phrynichus openly addresses the verbs ὁρκόω and ὁρκίζω (‘to make one swear an oath, to administer an oath’), denominatives with a factitive function based on ὅρκος ‘oath’. ὁρκόω belongs to the large class of factitive denominativesDenominative verbs in ‑όω from thematic stems (though Fraenkel 1906, 71 includes it among the ‘Instrumentativa’). ὁρκίζω, on the other hand, shows the analogical extension of the -ίζω suffix, which originally belongs with velar and dental stems (overview and collection of data in Müller 1915, 8–28). The same meaning as the simple verbs is also conveyed by the prefixed forms ἐξορκόω (first attested in Herodotus) and ἐξορκίζω (first attested in Demosthenes). We will only concern ourselves with the simple forms here.

Phrynichus advises his reader to use ὁρκόω, like Cratinus (C.1), and to avoid ὁρκίζω. He is likely also concerned with the word used to indicate the officer who oversaw the administration of the oath (ὁρκωτής, again used by Cratinus), though this is not openly stated (see below for this hypothesis). In the snippet of a line quoted by Phrynichus, Cratinus may be parodying official language (see Olson, Seaberg 2018, 227 for a brief commentary). ὁρκόω and ὁρκωτής are used in relation to formally binding oaths in Thucydides (C.2: a political context), Antiphon (C.3: a judicial context) and Xenophon (C.4: a diplomatic context), but already in Demosthenes ὁρκίζω occurs in the same sentence as ὁρκόω (C.5: a diplomatic context), while Xenophon (C.6) uses it outside a formal context. Significantly, in C.5 ὁρκόω occurs in the quotation of a formal decree, while Demosthenes uses ὁρκίζω to comment on the decree: this suggests that ὁρκόω may have been a more conservative form than ὁρκίζω (I thank the referee for this suggestion).

Thus, the root of Phrynichus’ motivations for preferring ὁρκόω must lie in a combination of his personal approach to Attic literary models and the status of ὁρκόω and ὁρκίζω in his own times. In the whole history of Ancient Greek, ὁρκόω is the rarer form, scoring some 100 attestations in the period between the 5th century BCE and the 4th century CE. Its occurrence in prominent authors of the Attic canon such as Thucydides, Cratinus and Aristophanes (Lys. 187, Th. 276) no doubt sustained Phrynichus in his choice of the verb against ὁρκίζω. The continuous use of ὁρκόω on the part of authors such as Isaeus, Xenophon, Lysias and Demosthenes confirms its Attic pedigree, as does its occurrence in inscriptions of the classical age (e.g. IG 1³.39.3–4 [Athens, 446/5 BCE], SEG 36.792.2 [Thasos, late 5th century BCE]). In post-classical literature, ὁρκόω occurs in both higher prose (ranging from Josephus and Plutarch to Appianus and Cassius Dio) and texts in a lower register (such as the Vita Sancti Abercii, Job’s Testament and the Passio Sancti Pancratii Romae). Despite its usage by some authors writing in high-register koine, ὁρκόω does not really stand out as an Atticism: if anything, it may perhaps have been perceived as a less common form, which would also explain Phrynichus’ preference.

ὁρκίζω, on the other hand, is an innovative by-form that gains ground in the koineKoine in accordance with the great productivity of -ίζω verbs in this period (Müller 1915, 39; Schwyzer 1939, 735–6), another fact that likely explains Phrynichus’ orientation. The verb scores more than 200 occurrences in the period between the 4th century BCE and the 4th century CE. Its attestations range from high-koine prose (Diodorus, Clemens of Alexandria, etc.) to Hellenistic inscriptions and papyri (see e.g. C.7, an extract from the city laws of Alexandria; see too P.Cair.Zen. 5.59846 [= TM 1470, Philadelphia ca. 263–229 BCE], concerning a lawsuit), as well as the lower language of the OldOld Testament and the New TestamentNew Testament (C.8, C.9). Starting from the Scriptures (e.g. C.9), ὁρκίζω also acquires the new transitive (and no longer factitive) meaning of ‘to adjure someone’ (from ‘to place someone under an oath’), a semantic change likely due to Semitic influence (Kotansky 1995, 251 and n. 18). This meaning, although usually avoided in high-level prose, is very common in religious texts, where around the 2nd century CE we also sometimes see ὁρκόω used in the same fashion. With the further specialised meaning ‘to place a demon under oath’ (i.e. ‘to make a demon swear that he will abandon the body of a possessed person’), ὁρκίζω – like ἐξορκίζω – also becomes the technical verb of exorcism, first attested around the 1st century BCE (see Kotansky 1995, 249–51).

The suggestion that Phrynichus’ criticism of ὁρκίζω is owing to the supposed non-Attic character of this verb is doubtful. Based on its occurrence in inscriptions from the Doric area, in his book on denominative verbs Fraenkel (1906, 86) assumed that it was one of those DoricDoric features that later spread to the koine (on the issue in general, see Kretschmer 15–20, in the context of his theory that the koine was not specifically based on Attic but was a ‘conglomerate’ of various dialects; Cassio 1999, 993–4; Cassio 2012). Fraenkel also explained its early occurrence in XenophonXenophon as one of the many instances of non-Attic vocabulary in the historian (on this aspect of Xenophon’s diction, see Huitink, Rood 2019, 23–32, who correctly advise against labelling as ‘dialectisms’ forms which may have been part of the spoken language but avoided in formal registers for some time). There is room to doubt Fraenkel’s hypothesis. First, the distribution of ὁρκόω and ὁρκίζω in Attic sources is not significantly different. More importantly, although ὁρκίζω is indeed frequent in Doric inscriptions, these occurrences never date to before the 4th–3rd centuries BCE (the earliest could be CID 4.2, [Delphi, ca. 400–375 BCE], where, however, the restoration of a form of ὁρκίζω features in a badly corrupt part of the text). This makes it impossible to prove that ὁρκίζω really was a dialectal verb that was later adopted by Attic authors and the koine. On balance, the frequency of ὁρκίζω in later Greek and the relatively more ‘archaic’ feel of ὁρκόω provide good enough reasons for Phrynichus’ dislike of the former (see too Lobeck 1820, 361); it is unnecessary to assume that it was originally a dialectal word.

No other lexicographer we know of follows Phrynichus’ proscription of ὁρκίζω. Pollux mentions both ὁρκόω and ὁρκίζω in two sections of the Onomasticon concerning oaths (B.1) and alliances (B.2). Photius (B.4) states that both verbs are allowed. Based on the seemingly anti-Phrynichean attitude of this lemma, Alpers identifies Photius’ source with Orus (through a lost version of the Synagoge), who elsewhere uses expressions like ἑκατέρως (Alpers 1981, 68; note however that no source is identified in Theodoridis’ edition of Photius).

In quoting Cratinus’ line, Phrynichus (A.1) also includes the agent noun derived from ὁρκόω, ὁρκωτής. It is unclear whether in this entry of the Eclogue he is specifically concerned with designations of the officers who administered oaths. However, an entry in Photius (B.5) is devoted precisely to the promotion of ὁρκωτής against ὁρκιστής and ὁρκωμότης (‘juror’), which suggests that Phrynichus’ attitude towards Cratinus’ ὁρκωτής might also have been prescriptive. With the exception of one attestation in the Hellenistic historian Polemon (fr. 83 Müller), ὁρκωτής only occurs in classical Attic literature (C.1, C.3, C.4) and inscriptions (e.g. IG I³ 11.10, before the mid-5th century BCE). This distribution reflects the fact that ὁρκωτής was a technical termTechnical language, used in particular for the specifically Athenian practice of employing commissioners to receive oaths from their allies (on this function, see A. J. Bayliss in Sommerstein, Bayliss 2013, 181–3). An antiquarian interest in Athenian customs, along with the lexical rarity of ὁρκωτής, must no doubt have made the word worthy of attention for the Atticists. It later survives only in lexicography. It is glossed by Hesychius (B.3) with the nominalised participle ὁ ὁρκίζων, a fact which could highlight the unsuitability of ὁρκιστής, a term explicitly rejected by Photius (B.5: Alpers 1981 identifies the source as Orus, but Theodoridis defines the lemma as a ‘glossa aliunde non nota’). Photius also proscribes ὁρκωμότης, which Pollux (B.1) seemingly approved of, if we are to trust those manuscripts in which the form is preserved (see the apparatus to B.1). According to Tsantsanoglou (1984, 76), ‘the addition of ὁρκωμότας here does not make any sense, unless one takes into account an Atticistic condemnation of ὁρκωμοτεῖν in the sense of ‘take an oath’’. Ιn fact, there is no trace of such condemnation in our sources: although in Attic literature ὁρκωμοτέω mostly occurs in tragedy, Pollux presents it as an acceptable form and does not single it out as particularly poetic.

E. Byzantine and Modern Greek commentary

The relative distribution of ὁρκόω and ὁρκίζω in Ancient Greek continues in Byzantine and Medieval Greek. Though much less frequent, ὁρκόω does not die out and may be found in legal texts, which sometimes recycle older material (see the 9th-century legal code known as the Basilica, e.g. at 49.1.6 Scheltema–van der Wal). It also occurs in less official texts, such as the hagiographies (see e.g. the 10th–11th-century Vitae Sancti Demetriani, l. 427 Grégoire). In Byzantine Greek ὁρκόω is also found more frequently with the meaning ‘to adjure someone’ (see e.g. Life of St Andrew Salus 10.462 Rydén: ὁρκῶ δέ σε τὸν θεὸν τὸν ποιήσαντα τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν ‘But I adjure you by God who made heaven and earth’). This is also the most frequent meaning in which ὁρκίζω is attested in Byzantine texts, while both in the classical meaning of ‘to make someone swear an oath’ and as a synonym of ὀμνύω ‘to swear’ the verb is not very common, and usually confined to classicising authors such as Photius (Bibl. 242.339a.11), and Anna Comnene (e.g. 13.12.10, 14.2.14). All these meanings of ὁρκόω and ὁρκίζω also feature in Medieval Greek (see Kriaras, LME s.vv.), though only ὁρκίζω continues into Standard Modern Greek (see LKN s.v.).

F. Commentary on individual texts and occurrences

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