regarded themsehes as the mcjst religious of people.-’ Individuals frequently took oaths when making a contract:’* only, these oaths did not have legal impact. Indeed, unless there was some belief in the efficacy of oaths, they would have had no place in law at all. Only, there are lev els of belief. It is their limited and purely secular role in law that enables us to see these legal oaths as d’he Last Best Chance. It may just be significant-I feel it must be, but have no proof-that whereas a normal Roman oath was proferred to a particular deity we are nowhere told that the oath with legal effect was made to a spedfic god or goddess. IV But the Roman approach to the legal oath is not the onlv one. Other possibilities that really do involve an appeal to the supernatural can easily be envisaged. Only three need be mentioned here. First, where there is sufficient rational ev idence, the oath may be imposed, and tested by supernatural means. Secondly, where there is little or no rational evidence, the oath mav be used, and tested by supernatural means. Thirdly, where there is considerable, but not adequate, rational evidence, the oath may be used, and tested by supernatural means. I'hese approaches may in one system appear separately or together. When the first approach is taken, the oath is not I'he Last Best Chance. Those involved in the process have more faith in the intervention of the deitv than in human reason. With the 22 See, e.g., Cicero De haruspicum responsis 9.19; De natura deorum 2.3.8; Sallust Bellum Catilinae 12.3; Bellumjugurthinum14.19. Valerius Maximus 1.1.8, 9; Tertullian Apologeticus 25.2; Polybius 6.56.6ff. Augustine pokes fun at this notion in De civitate Dei 4.8; cf., e.g., Georg Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer, 2d edit. (Leipzig, 1912) pp. 386ff.; W.H.C. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church (NewYork, 1967), pp. 77f. 23 See, e.g., Cato de agri cultura 148. 134
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