Oaths and covenants
idea · 3 works · 3 mentions · 3 anchored passages
covenants · oaths · mutual pledges · oath · sworn agreement
in the texts
On the Treaty with Alexander
The sworn obligations that ratify the general peace and are used to judge conduct under the treaty.
Our hearty assent, men of Athens, is due to those who insist that we should abide by our oaths and covenants, provided that they do so from conviction;
but they have grown so insolent, with the tyrant’s troops for their bodyguard, that they insist on your observing the already violated oaths, as if Alexander’s absolute sovereignty extended over perjury also;
It is surely wrong that you should be highly indignant when you are the victims of such coercion, but should neglect all safeguards if it is employed somewhere else, contrary to the sworn agreement with you, and that we here at Athens should be urged by certain speakers to abide by the oaths, while they grant this liberty of action to the men who have so notoriously made those oaths of no effect.
Archidamus
The sworn agreements connecting the Heraclids, Spartan forefathers, and later claims of justice.
then having confirmed these covenants by mutual pledges, they set out upon the expedition.
Now you men of Sparta have until this day remained faithful to the oaths and to the covenants which you made with my forefathers;
and although it was only the other day that they razed both Thespiae and Plataea to the ground, yet now, after a lapse of four hundred years, they propose to settle their colonists in Messene acting in both cases contrary to the oaths and covenants.
On the Peace
Binding commitments whose neglect marks imperial corruption.
For in place of the ways of life established among them it filled the citizens with injustice, indolence, lawlessness and avarice and the commonwealth with contempt for its allies, covetousness of the possessions of other states, and indifference to its oaths and covenants.