the Persian commander hit upon an ingenious solution. He dug a trench, laid thin boards over it and covered the boards with dirt so that, to the naked eye, it looked like an ordinary level patch of earth.  A peace conference was then held the next day – carefully staged so as to take place right over the hidden trench.  It was agreed that, in exchange for a reasonable payment by the Barcaeans, the Persians would lift the siege and depart.  The Persians confirmed the arrangement by solemnly swearing that the agreement would remain in force so long as the earth beneath their feet remained firm.  When the gates to the city were then thrown open, the Persians rushed in and captured the town – though only after pointedly exposing the hidden trench, so as not to stand accused of violating their oath.

In A.D. 51, as related by Tacitus, a city in Armenia was being besieged by a force from the neighbouring kingdom of Iberia (i.e., not the Spanish-Portuguese peninsula).  In the course of negotiations to end the siege, Rhadamistus, the son of the Iberian king, swore an oath that, if the Armenian leader,Mithradates, would surrender the city, Rhadamistus would do no violence to him by sword or poison. Mithradates, alas, failed to appreciate the limited nature of that commitment.  He was indeed killed – neither by sword nor poison, to be sure, but instead by being thrown to the ground and smothered.

The Romans were supposed to be different, given the emphasis that Roman law placed on good faith.  But good faith was apparently reserved for dealings with fellow citizens. A tale is told of how the Romans, after one of their many conflicts with the Samnites, were permitted to remove one row of stones from a Samnite defence wall. The cagey Romans then set about removing the bottom row rather than the top one – thereby bringing the wall completely down.  Not dissimilar was an arrangement that the Romans made with the Seleucid ruler Antiochus in the Second Century B.C.  Antiochus, after a decisive defeat, was to surrender half of his naval fleet to the Romans.  The Romans then decided that they preferred to carry this out by taking one-half of each Seleucid ship.

What is interesting about these various incidents – some of which admittedly seem more like music-hall gags than actual historical events – is that there is so little evidence of disapproval of them.  It was, apparently, widely regarded as being up to the beneficiaries of commitments under oath to be watchful as to the precise terms of the arrangement in question.  Not surprisingly, some states took care to include anti-deceit clauses in treaties that they concluded with other states – although this did not ever become a common practice.  One standard formula was to specify that treaty commitments were to be carried out “without trick.”  Alternatively, commitments were sometimes stated to be discharged “not with craft nor with stratagem.”

It would seem that the principal voices raised against sophistic interpretations of oaths and treaties were the stoic philosophers – fittingly, as they had a reputation for being earnest, strait-laced killjoys.  Cicero, who was influenced by stoic thought, voiced a suitably high-minded objection to such practices.  He gives as an example not to be followed, that of a general (tactfully unnamed) who swore to observe a truce of “thirty days” – and then proceeded to undertake his devastations by night.

In the Seventeenth Century, Hugo Grotius similarly expressed stern disapproval of sophistry in the interpretation of legal obligations.  Our modern law also takes this course.  Most notably, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties requires treaties to be interpreted “in good faith.”  This brings some welcome confidence to bear on the process of treaty-making – though at the expense, it may be said, of a certain degree of entertainment.

For those interested in the wily doings of our classical ancestors, Frontinus (noted above) was the author, in the First Century A.D., of an informative book on The Strategems, which drew to some extent on his personal military experience.  Another useful handbook of strategems of war was written in the following century by a certain Polyaenus.  He strayed at times from his subject, to dispense welcome advice on such ever timely topics as “how to woo a tyrant’s daughter” and “how to force your relatives to give you money” – subjects of obvious utility.  For those who prefer a more sober and scholarly approach, the work to consult is Everett L. Wheeler, “Sophistic Interpretations and Greek Treaties” (1984), in volume 25 of Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies (available in any well-stocked law library).  It made the research for this column a particular pleasure.