Fun fact about swearing on things: There is a widely-held but probably untrue belief that the origin of the words "testify", "testimony" etc was that in ancient Rome you swore an oath with one hand on your testicles, I guess the implication being "If I don't tell the truth you can cut these off". Women weren't allowed to give legal testimony so the fact they wouldn't be able to do this isn't a drawback to this theory. This is probably a myth because there's no written evidence of this particular form of oath being taken in Rome and the word for "witness" is "testis". "Testicle" actually derives from the diminutive of this word (rather than the other way around).[1]
The origin of this myth seems to be a biblical passage in which such an oath was taken.
Fun fact about swearing on things: There is a widely-held but probably untrue belief that the origin of the words "testify", "testimony" etc was that in ancient Rome you swore an oath with one hand on your testicles, I guess the implication being "If I don't tell the truth you can cut these off". Women weren't allowed to give legal testimony so the fact they wouldn't be able to do this isn't a drawback to this theory. This is probably a myth because there's no written evidence of this particular form of oath being taken in Rome and the word for "witness" is "testis". "Testicle" actually derives from the diminutive of this word (rather than the other way around).[1]
The origin of this myth seems to be a biblical passage in which such an oath was taken.
[1] https://worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-swe1.htm