The Quick Return of the God Horkos,the God of Oaths¹

Aesop on Retribution for Violating Oaths

(From Aesop’s Fables)

A MAN, TO WHOM A FRIEND HAD ENTRUSTED a deposit of money, was intending to withhold repayment. When this friend issued a court summons for him to take an oath [όρκος or horkos], he became anxious and departed for the countryside.

At the town gates he met a lame man, also leaving, and he asked him who he was and where he was going. The latter replied that he was the god Horkos [Oath] and that he was seeking out the ungodly. So the man asked a second question:

“And after how long an interval is it that you usually return to the towns?”

“After forty, sometimes thirty, years,” he replied.

After that, the man didn’t hesitate to swear the next day that he had never received the money. But he came face to face with Horkos, who led him off to hurl him from a cliff. The man moaned:

“You told me that you didn’t come back for thirty years, but you haven’t even granted me a single day in safety.”

Horkos replied:

“You ought to know that when someone wishes to provoke me, I have the habit of returning on the same day.”

(Moral: This fable shows that there is no specified day for divine punishment of the godless.)

Endnotes

¹ Aesop, The Complete Fables (Temble, Robert and Olivia, trans.) (London: Penguin Books, 1998), 221. The God of Oaths, Horkos (Όρκος) is also known as Horcus or Orcus. ⇑