Horkos

According to Hesiod's Theogony, Horkos was the son of Eris (Strife), attended at birth by the Erinyes (Furies), with no father mentioned.

[3] Like all the children of Eris, Horkos is a personification of an abstract concept, and represents one of the many harms which might be thought to result from discord and strife.

[9] Such an association is fitting, since the Erinyes were divine agents who fulfilled curses, including the conditional self-curse involved in oath taking, as personified by Horkos.

According to Herodotus, the Spartan king Leotychidas claimed that Horkos (through a nameless son) would punish those who foreswore an oath, or even considered doing so, by destroying all a man's family and household.

[12] Even though these punishments might take place over generations, and so occur slowly over time, Horkos and his son are also presented as acting quickly.

700 BC), in his Theogony, has Horkos as one of the many harmful offspring of Eris (Strife): And loathsome Strife bore painful Toil and Forgetfulness and Hunger and tearful Pains, ... and Oath [Horkos], who indeed brings most woe upon human beings on the earth, whenever someone willfully swears a false oath.In his Works and Days he says that the Erinyes (Furies) assisted at the birth of Horkos, and warns that the "fifth days" of each month are especially dangerous as Horkos was born on the "fifth":[19] Avoid the fifth days, since they are difficult and dread: for they say that it was on the fifth that the Erinyes attended upon Oath [Horkos] as it was born—Oath, which Strife [Eris] bore as a woe to those who break their oath.In another Works and Days passage, Hesiod describes Horkos assisting Justice (Dike), running: along beside crooked judgments, and there is a clamor when Justice is dragged where men, gift-eaters, carry her off and pronounce verdicts with crooked judgments; but she stays, weeping, with the city and the people’s abodes, clad in invisibility, bearing evil to the human beings who drive her out and do not deal straight.The fifth-century BC Greek historian Herodotus relates a story told by the Spartan king Leotychidas to the Athenians, during the Peloponnesian War in 490 BC.

[20] It concerned a would-be oath-breaker Glaucus who had asked the Delphic oracle's advice about dishonouring an oath he had made concerning the return of a deposit of money, and the oracle answered that he would profit for the moment if he kept the money, but that it would bring about the destruction of him and his heirs, saying: But Oath [Horkos] has a son, nameless; he is without hands Or feet, but he pursues swiftly, until he catches

The fable concerns a man who had taken a deposit from a friend and, when reminded of his oath to return it, left the town hurriedly.