These may seem trifling minutiæ to notice, but nothing can fairly be considered unimportant which may lead to the elucidation of the domestic history of Milton.
S. W. Singer.
Mickleham.
OATHS.
(Vol. viii., p. 364.)
There can be no doubt that, as your correspondent suggests, the judicial oath was originally taken without kissing the book, but with the form of laying the right hand upon it; and, moreover that this custom is of Pagan origin. Amongst the Greeks, oaths were frequently accompanied by sacrifice; and it was the custom to lay the hands upon the victim, or upon the altar, thereby calling to witness the deity by whom the oath was sworn. So Juvenal, Sat. XIV. 218.:
"Falsus erit testis, vendet perjuria summa
Exigua, et Cereris tangens aramque pedemque."
Christians under the later Roman emperors adopted from the Greeks a similar ceremony. In the well-known case of Omychund v. Barker, heard in Michaelmas Term, 1744, and reported in 1 Atk. 27., the Solicitor-General quoted a passage from Selden, which gives us some information on this point: