[12]
They say that at
Athens, when some man, who
had lived among the Athenians with a high character for piety and wisdom,
had given his evidence in public, and (as is the custom of the Greeks) was
approaching the altar for the purpose of taking an oath in confirmation of
it, all the judges cried out that he need not take the oath. When Greeks
were unwilling to appear to imagine that the good faith of a well-proved man
felt itself more bound by the formality of an oath than by the simple
obligation of truth, shall we have a doubt as to what sort of man Cnaeus
Pompeius has been in respect of his regard for the religious observance of
laws and treaties?
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M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. George Bell & Sons, York Street, Covent Garden. 1891.
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