Adultery

Adultery in Europe

Definition of Adultery

Sexual intercourse between a married man or married woman and any person other than his or her wife or husband. Adultery by either party was, in the history of Great Britain and the United States, a ground for judicial separation or divorce. See Divorce in Europe here.

See Adultery in the legal Dictionaries.

History

In accordance to the Cambridge Dictionary of Classical Civilization:

“In Greek and Roman society, adultery was defined by the status of the woman. Married men could freely have sex with SLAVES and PROSTITUTES. In Greece, adultery was seen as a threat to the purity of the citizen line. In Athens, a wronged husband could demand monetary damages from his wife’s lover or kill him if he caught him in the act (Lysias, On the Killing of Eratosthenes). He was obliged to DIVORCE his wife. The sources are silent on her fate, which must have been grim. It is uncertain whether she retained her dowry, but we know she could be attacked if she tried to attend religious ceremonies – the main social outlet for Athenian women (Pseudo-Demosthenes, Against Neaira). The stigma on herself and her children was considerable. In SPARTA the small but dominant Spartiate group, also preoccupied with civic purity, practised selective polyandry. It was not adultery if a respectable woman could have children with a worthy man approved by her husband for the good of the state (Xenophon, Spartan Society = Lakedaimonion politeia).

Like their Greek equivalents, wronged husbands at Rome sometimes adopted vicious and colourful self-help measures against their rivals, but apparently stopped short of the ‘homicide of honour’. The emperor AUGUSTUS’ legislation of 18 BC imposed severe penalties (loss of property, exile) on adulterers of both sexes.”

Resources

Further Reading

  • Lacey, W. K. (1968) The Family in Classical Greece;
  • Richlin, A. (1981) Approaches to the sources on adultery at Rome, Women’s Studies 8.1–2: 225–50.

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