Th e notion of delayed generational punishment, or ancestral fault, has a long history in Greek literature. Th e identifi cation of its earliest attestations in the Archaic period is contested, especially its presence in Homeric poetry. Th is paper aims to show that delayed generational punishment does indeed appear in Homer, where it is, however, confi ned to one context: the great oath of exôleia of Iliad 3.298-301 and 4.155-65. Th e institutional and ritual context of the generational oath is essential to understanding this earliest Greek attestation of ancestral fault, and making sense of the idea's larger signifi cance for narrative perspective, divine justice, and temporal order in the Homeric epic.