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Question 28.
Why do they prohibit the children to swear by Hercules within doors, but command them to go out of doors to do it?
Solution. Is the reason (as some say) that they are of opinion that Hercules was not delighted in a domestic life, but chose rather to live abroad in the fields? Or rather because he was none of their native country Gods, but a foreigner? For neither do they swear by Bacchus within doors, he being a foreigner, if it be he whom the Greeks call Dionysus. Or what if these things are uttered in sport to amuse children; and is this, on the contrary, for a restraint of a frivolous and rash oath, as Favorinus saith? For that which is done, as it were, with preparation causes delay and deliberation. If a man judges as Favorinus doth of the things recorded about Hercules, it would seem that this was not common to other Gods, but peculiar to him; for history tells us that he had such a religious veneration for an oath, that he swore but once only to Phyleus, son of Augeas. Wherefore the Pythia upbraids the Lacedaemonians with such swearing, as though it would be more laudable and better to pay their vows than to swear.
Quaestiones Romanae. Plutarch. ed. William W. Goodwin. Boston. 1874.
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