“Let not the wise man take an oath in vain, even for things of little weight; for he who takes an oath in vain is lost in this world and the next. “Let the judge swear the Brahman by his truth; the Kshatriya by his horses, his elephants, or his arms; the Vaisya by his cows, his corn, and his gold; the Sudra by all crimes.”[39] And in the more detailed code of Vishnu there is an exceedingly complicated system of objects to be sworn upon, varying with the amount at stake and the caste of the swearer.[40] We see the same custom in Greece, where Homer represents Hera as exculpating herself by an oath on the sacred head of Zeus, and on their marriage-bed, a practice which mortals imitated by swearing on the heads of their children, or on that of their patron, or of the king.[41] Under the Roman law, oaths were frequently taken on the head of the litigant, or on those of his children.[42] The Norse warrior was sworn, like the Hindu Kshatriya, on his warlike gear: “Oaths shalt thou First to me swear, By board of ship, By rim of shield, By shoulder of steed, By edge of sword, That thou wilt not slay The wife of Volund, Nor of my bride Cause the death.”[43] When these material pledges were not offered, the sanctions of religion have in all ages been called into play to impress the imagination of the swearer with the awful responsibility incurred, the presence of the deity being obtained by the offer of a sacrifice, or his interposition being assured by the use of some object of peculiar sacredness. In Deuteronomy, when the corpse of a murdered man was found, the elders of the nearest city disculpated themselves and their fellow-citizens before the Levites over the body of a heifer slain for the purpose.[44] We see the same principle applied to promissory oaths in the horse which Tyndareus sacrificed and buried when he exacted from the suitors of Helen the oath that they would accede to her choice of a bridegroom and defend her and her husband against all comers;[45] and it is only necessary to allude to the well-known Ara Maxima of Hercules in Rome to show the prevalence of the same customs among the Italiotes. Similar practices were familiar to the Norsemen. Among them the Godi was both priest and judge, the judgment-seat adjoined the temple, and all parties to a suit, including judge and witnesses, were solemnly sworn upon the sacred ring kept for that purpose on the altar. It was sprinkled with the blood of a sacrificial bull, and then the oath was taken by invoking Freyr and Niord, and the almighty As to help the swearer as he should maintain truth and justice.[46] Yet so little did all these precautions serve to curb the untruthfulness of the cunning sea-kings that in Viga-Glums Saga we find Glum denying a charge of murder by an oath taken in three temples, in which he called Odin to witness in words so craftily framed that while he was in reality confessing his guilt he apparently was denying it most