Please answer the following questions based on David Cohen. "The Augustan Law on Adultery: The Social and Cultural Context" article:

1. What is the main problem or issue that David Cohen addresses in his article, and what is his general thesis?

2. In what ways were the Romans obsessed with female sexuality? 3. In his conclusion, Cohen argues that while the Augustan law on adultery (lex Julia de adulteriis) was not an instance of using law to shape morals, it did set the groundwork for later Christian efforts to do just that. Explain.

I also attached the whole article here so it is easily accessible:

David Cohen. "The Augustan Law on Adultery: The Social and Cultural Context"

In a .d . 19, during the reign ofTiberius, a Roman woman ofpraetorian rank, Vistilia, wife ofTitidius Labeo, was convicted ofadultery. The accusation itself represents nothing novel, for the prosecution for adultery ofwomen of exalted social status was far from unknown during this epoch. What makes Vistilia noteworthy, however, is that she had inscribed herself on the aedile's list of public prostitutes. The immediate reasons for this action are transparent: the lexJulia de adulteriis coercendis, promulgated by Augustus in 18 B.c. (the same year as his sweeping reform offamily law in the lexjulia de maritandis ordinibus'), specifically excluded professional prostitutes, actresses, and women who worked in public houses from its scope. Vistilia, then, had attempted to remove her private life from the regulation ofthe law by exploiting a loophole in the statute. Although Vistilia's ploy did not protect her from prosecution and conviction, her case was either representative or notorious enough that a senatus consultum closed the loophole by ruling that no woman whose father, grandfather, or husband had been a Roman knight could prostitute herself (Tacitus, Ann. 2.84).1

What is one to make ofthis case ofa Roman matron fromthe elite inscribing herself as a common prostitute so as to carry on her adulterous liaisons in peace? We will never know whether a desire to protest an unpopular law or simple depravity motivated Vistilia in particular, but Suetonius's description of the case suggests that at some point circumvention ofthe law in this manner became flagrant and rendered legislative action necessary (JAberius 3 5.iff.). Indeed, Tacitus indicates that the failure of traditional sanctions created the loophole in the first place. In formertimes, he comments, the shame ofinscription on this list would have been punishment enough. Although Vistilia's case has rich implications for certain legal historical topologies (Daube 1978), I would like to explore instead its place within the Roman legal and social context, and the relation ofthis, in turn, to the broader problem ofhow ancient legal systems regulated the social problems arising out of such illicit sexual behavior as adultery. More specifically, the following analysis addresses two main questions:

First, are we to apprehend Vistilia's behavior as yet another example ofthe corruption of traditional Roman mores? In particular, does such behavior testify to the weakening, or absence, of norms associated with the values of honor and shame, which regulate female sexuality?

Second, under what theoretical rubric can the Augustan legislation on adultery best be comprehended? Ought one to view Roman legislation on adultery as an attempt to enforce morality for its own sake, that is, as an articulation of categories of moral transgression that the state will not tolerate? Or does Augustus's legislation represent a massive attempt at social engineering, an expansion of state power over sexuality and the family for the sake of power and knowledge itself, analogous, say, to the developments sketched by Michel Foucault in volume 1 of The History ofSexuality and in Discipline andPunish, and by Jacques Donzelot in The Policing of Families?

The Lega Context

The Augustan legislation on adultery stands in stark reliefto the treatment of marital sexuality in the preceding legal period. Most Roman law scholars from Theodor Mommsen and Hans Bennecke to David Daube and Dieter Norr hold that prior to the lex Julia de adulteriis Roman legislation was largely unconcerned with adultery. That is, apart from censorial or other public action in exceptional cases, the law refrained from interfering with the right of the family to deal with adultery and its consequences. Augustus's lex Julia de adulteriis changed all of this in ways nothing less than revolutionary. In a {subsequent chapter Eva Cantarella discusses these changes in detail, so here it suffices to indicate that the law established a permanent court to punish a broad range ofextramarital sexual activities. For most women, the law prohibited all extramaritalsexual relations, but slaves, prostitutes, and practitioners ofcertain base professions remained outside its scope. Men could suffer the penalties for adultery or stuprum if they engaged in intercourse with married women or unmarried women who did not fall into these low-status classes. The law also introduced important innovations for the treatment of adulterers and adulteresses taken in the act. Again, Cantarella takes up this question in detail, but it is important to note that a cuckolded husband could under no circumstances kill his wife, though he might kill her partner ifthat man were ofsufficiently low status. Further, the adulteress's father could put both her and the adulterer to death only ifthey were taken in the very act ofintercourse in his house or the husband's house.

The dramatic and far-reaching provisions of this legislation, only briefly sketched here, contrast sharply with the behavior of Roman matrons who registered themselves as prostitutes to escape its provisions. Is one to imagine a morally degenerate society resisting imperial attempts to reinject moral standards that have become utterly alien to it? Such an interpretation fits well with literary topoi about the degeneracy ofthe age: "Ubi nunc lex Julia? Dormis?" (Juvenal 2.37). Before accepting such conventional interpretations, however, one ought to reconsider the social norms informing sexual practices and their relation to the Augustan legislation. Though our evidence for both attitudes and conduct is woefully inadequate, certain patterns may tentatively be suggested.

HONOR AND SHAME

Richard Sailer (1991) has demonstrated the importance of conceptions of personal honor and shame for understanding Roman attitudes toward authority. corporal punishment, and bodily integrity. In many other respects as well, Roman conceptions ofthe proper spheres for competitive male activity correspond to general Mediterranean patterns concerning the determinants ofsocial status and the sexual division ofspace, labor, and power. Thisis not the place to elaborate Roman conceptualizations of public and private space, the social, economic, and political roles of men and women within these spheres, and so on. Rather, I should like to focus on one particular question within this general context: Can one usefully apprehend the constellation of Roman sexual and social norms, values, and beliefs involving illicit sexuality through a conceptual scheme derived from comparative Mediterranean studies ofhonor and shame? More specifically, can such a scheme illuminate the social context of the Augustan legislation on adultery? I began this chapter with the case of Vistilia because, like othersuch exempla ofsexual laxity, itsuggests that, whatever the relevance of honor and shame for early republican Rome, the society of the early empire oriented itself according to other values. The argument that follows suggests that howeverstriking such cases may be, they can mislead the historian into taking the part for the whole.

To begin with, the case ofVistilia, ifaccurately reported, recounts the actual conduct of a particular Roman woman. Anthropologists at least since Bronislaw Malinowski have recognized that many societies manifest sharp divergences between the ideological representation of sex and gender and actual social practices. Malinowski (1929, 496572) found in his investigation of Trobriand sexuality that although Trobrianders represent their society as abhorring incest, particularly brother-sister incest, as an unthinkable sexual abomination this does not mean that, Trobriander claims to the contrary, such cases never occur. What is more significant, such occurrences do not invalidate the norm, nor do they imply that Trobriand informants all lied about their culture. Rather, in the realm ofsex and gender the norms of practice and the norms of ideology typically operate in a state of conflict, ambiguity, and tension. Their dynamic interplay forms the social context that individuals manipulate, interpret, avoid, and occasionally defy, according to their particular purposes. In turn, whichever strategy individuals choose to pursue in relation to this normative context, by orienting their conduct accordingly they contribute to the reproduction of the social system.2 In short, examples of moral degeneracy do not tell the whole story. One must view them instead within the larger context ofpractice, purpose, and ideology of which they are a part.

As a heuristic device, three principles can be distinguished that frame the sexual ideology associated with honor and shame in many traditional Mediterranean societies.3 First, a strong emphasis on female sexual purity, in particular, the virginity of girls as a prerequisite for an honorable marriage, and the exclusive possession by the husband of his wife's sexual and reproductive potential. Second, the community judges a man's honorto a significant degree according to the sexual purity ofthe women to whom he is related. Failure eitherto protect that purity or to avenge its violation is generally regarded as a humiliating failure ofmasculinity. Because ofits capacity to bring ruin to a man and his house, women's sexuality is seen as a dangerous force that men must guard and restrict. Third, although active and dominant male sexuality is positively valued, there is some ambivalence about its unbridled exercise. The adulterer is a man who robs other men oftheir honor by seducing their wives, . - . . I III I II-------- "" * - .* , - * and though he enhances his masculinity by doing so, the socially disruptive force that adultery represents leads, particularly in certain contexts, to a negative valuation ofmen who destroy the homes of others.

FEMALE CHASTITY

The norms associated with honor and shame placed a high premium on the virginity ofbrides. Informants in traditional Mediterranean societies typically explain the early marriage of girls as a way of preventing "accidents" that might ruin a woman's chances offinding a husband (Maher 1974, 155 Sanders 1962, 158). Institutionalized in the vestal virgins, virginity also occupied an important place in the sexual imagination of Roman society. As this is well known, a few examples suffice to make the point. The rhetorical exercises embodied in the Elder Seneca's Controversiae (1.2.5, 9.1.1, 9.1.4-6) reflect the belief not only that brides should be virgins, but also that those who lose their virginity through rape are nonetheless tainted and cannot (in theory) marry. Thus a girl who has been raped may be expected to attempt suicide (Controv. 3.5). To preserve their sexual purity, Plutarch explains, Roman girls are married very young (Lyc. and Num. 4; Mor. 138E).

As in traditional Mediterranean communities, chastity was also expected of married women (Giovannini 1986). In fact, claims Cacero"(5catzr. 8), a wife should die rather than sacrifice her chastity. Women, of course, are seen as x often falling short ofthese expectations: Seneca (Consol. Helv. 16.3), like other moralists, considers female unchastity as the greatest evil of his time.4 Similarly, Juvenal (Sat. 6) speaks of the positive-value of chastity andi relates how wives constantly abuse it. Wives, he says, must be confined indoors to be kept pure.

Mediterranean societies oriented toward the ideology of honor and shame characteristically judge female chastity according to a politics of reputation, whereby assumptions about a woman's private sexual conduct rest on inferences from her public behavior (Cohen 1991, chap. 4). Thus a girl who lingers at the fountain, or takes too long returning from the stream or fields, is assumed to have had an illicit liaison (Du Boulay 1974, 112). In this way, the politics of reputation, from the standpoint of the subject, is largely one of managing appearances, based on one's knowledge ofthe conventional ways of drawing inferences from certain types of conduct. Further, women should avoid being the subject of gossip, since gossip will always find ways of interpreting innocent behavior in a bad light (Maraspini 1968, 180; Freeman 1970,140). As Thucydides (2.46) has Pericles say, the best thing for a woman is not to be talked about at all, whether for good or bad. Roman sources in turn amply testify to the operation of similar patterns of normative expectations.

The ideological significance of chastity in Roman consciousness is manifest in the patterns of crucial events in their invented early history. According to Livy, the kings were turned out because ofthe violation ofthe matron Lucretia. Likewise, the decemvirs suffered the same fate on account of the rape of Virginia. That major historical upheavals were portrayed as arising from violations of chastity testifies to its centrality in the scheme of values.6 Rhetoricians played upon the same normative expectations in theirtraining. As one ofthe Controversiae (1.2.10) puts it, no woman is chaste enough ifan inquiry has to be held concerning her. In another (2.7.2), a woman is accused of adultery by her husband solely on the groundsthat another man left her money in his will. The Controversiae are, ofcourse, rhetorical exercises involving highly contrived situations. Nonetheless, they aim at persuasion by invoking commonly held values, so though the events they depict may be spurious, they provide valuable evidence of attitudes and ideal norms. Other sources confirm this valuation of chastity. According to the law ofinjuria, for a man merely to follow a woman in the street called her chastity into question and thus gave rise to an action. As Ulpian (Dig. 47.10.15.22)'comments, "assiduous proximity virtually reveals something disreputable." Similarly, Suetonius claims that Caesar divorced his wife upon mere rumor of adultery, because she should have been entirely free ofsuspicion (1.64). Cicero (Cael. 15-35) likewise attests the politics of reputation based on inferences about a womans unobserved sexual behavior: the fact of close association with a man, he argues, raises a presumption ofillicit sexuality that must then be disproved. Finally, Quintilian (4.2.69) says that behavior from which an inference of adultery may be drawn includes such circumstances as a woman celebrating or bathing with men, or even having close friendships with them.

Seneca (Ben. 9.5) also infers character and conduct from appearance when . he describes a married woman who wears revealing clothes as having aban-doned modesty (pudor). Such women, he concludes, must be adulteresses. He also recounts what the politics ofreputation require ofa woman who wants to preserve old-fashioned female modesty: she must avoid being seen in public at all or serving as a subject for gossip. The best reputation for a woman, he claims in an argument reminiscent ofPericles, is not to have one (Consol Helv. 19.6). Seneca was well aware, of course, of the discrepancy between the ideology ofhonor and shame and the way in which some Roman women lived. He recounts with contempt how a man is counted as a boor (rusdcus'} by other women ifhe refuses to let his wife appear in public in a sedan chair, open to the view of everyone (Ben. 1.9.4). The importance of such contradictions and conflicts in values cannot be overemphasized. Social norms and practices, as Bourdieu (1977, 1-90) has shown, do not constitute a logically coherent abstract system. We are doomed to misapprehend the patterned chaos ofsocial life by imposing on it a uniformity that is not its own.

The assumptions underlying such judgments about a woman's sexual purity become explicit in one of the Controversiae (2.7.9), which echoes widespread Mediterranean sexual topoi. Woman's nature, the argument goes, is such that her best defense is never to have caused gossip and to be believedto be chaste. Accordingly, for women the one glory ispudicitia and to be seen to be chaste. Thus, the text continues, a woman who wants to avoid suspicion of adultery and to deter seducers, whose mere presence would arouse such suspicions, should go out dressed up only enough to avoid appearing unkempt. Her companions should be old, and she should go about with her eyes on the ground. If confronted with overattentive greetings, she should blush and appear confused, for such behavior is the guardian ofher honor (integritas}. This account of female chastity eloquently reflects the ideological stereotypes that dominate the Mediterranean imagination. The girls of Lebanon, Greece, and Andalusia must exercise similar care in regard to the greetings of men on the street (though the nuances may vary), and a woman who looks a man straight in the eye, or does not blush in the presence of a male stranger, is generally considered to be loose.

MALE HONOR AND FEMALE SEXUALITY

The ideology ofhonor and shame constrains women to avoid contacts with men that would damage their reputation. Failure to do so reflects on the males of their family: most immediately, on their husband, father, and sons, more remotely on their entire lineage. A substantial body of evidence indicates that this linkage offemale sexuality and male honor informed Roman social practices as well. To begin with, the law ofinjuria, in the words ofUlpian, provided that "Every injuria is either inflicted upon the person, or involves one's honor or one's disgrace. It relates to the person when someone is struck, to one's honor when a matron's companion is led astray, and to one's disgrace when chastity is attacked" (Dig. 47.10.1.2). The husband or father of a daughter or wife so insulted is equally the object ofthe injuria and has an action in his own right against the wrongdoer.

As Cicero explains, a virtuous woman derives honor from her illustrious male relatives, but she also gives honor back to them through her reputation (Rose. Am. 50.147). An adulteress, however, not only dishonors her husband, who has allowed herto be seduced by failing to guard her chastity, but also calls into question the paternity ofhersons (Controv. 9.1.14,1.4.12,7.5.13-15). Such themes abound in Roman rhetorical exercises: in the case mentioned above, where a wife is accused of adultery because a man leaves her money in his will (Controv. 2.7.2), her husband's honor requires that he suspect adultery in spite ofthe lack ofany other evidence ofimpropriety. Indeed, the mere approach of an adulterer to a married woman involves an insult (injuria) to the woman, to the integrity of her husband's house, and to her husband himself (2.7.5). The similar treatment ofsexual approaches to women as injuria to their husbands or fathers in Dig. 47.10.15.15?. testifies to the way the law utilized the same normative categories. .Similarly, Cicero (Scaur. Fr. 2.6) refers to the disgrace of not protecting one's wife from other men. Indeed, Tacitus (Ann. 4.2!!.) tells us that when Sejanus set out to humiliate Drusus (who had slapped him), he could think of no better way than seducing Livilla, his wife. Tacitus further notes that by this adultery she degraded not only herself, but also her ancestors and her descendants.

This complex ofvalues and beliefs, which links female chastity to the family as a whole, and particularly to its male inhabitants, finds particularly clear expression in another of the Controversiae (3.5): the man whose daughter is raped must salve his wounds, rebuild his household (familia}, lament the despoiling of his house, console his daughter for her ravished virginity, and prevent her from taking her life. In this ideological context belong the principles ofthe law ofinjuria, whereby sexual insults or behavior that calls into question a woman's chastity is actionable by the males principally related to her. One finds the same argument in Cicero's Pro Caelio (iy}f, compare 18.42). It is shameful, he argues, to attack a woman's reputation falsely. Attacking a woman, and the men connected to her, by questioning her sexual reputation brings disgrace on the males ofthe family. Thus, he concludes, virtuous women bring glory on a house, whereas adulteresses dishonor the men ofthe family. This belief finds what is perhaps its most extreme expression in the Roman instantiation of a classic Mediterranean patternjudging the sexual purity of the wife by whether the children look like their father (Horace, Odes 5.21-24; Macrobius, Sat. 2.5; Juvenal 6.598-601; compare Brandes 1975, 228).

When men fail to preserve the chastity oftheir women, revenge provides the only means of erasing the stain. Of course, the ideology ofrevenge may vary widely from actual practice. In many Mediterranean societies informants assert that adultery orseduction inevitably results in the death ofthe daughter or wife and her lover. Frequently, however, such claims bear little resemblance to reality. In Rome, the lex Julia provided that under certain circumstances the father or husband could take direct revenge. That such instances sometimes occurred appears from passages in the Digest, which report that clemency was often granted to husbands who exceeded these statutory limits. In any event, at the level of ideology, violations of one's women requires revengethis is a constant theme in the Elder Seneca's Controversiae, whetherfor adultery (1.4) or rape (1.5.1, 7.8.10, 9.1.1, 9.1.4-6). As one ofthe arguments (1.5.1) expresses this sentiment for a case of rape, "Revenge, fathers! Revenge, brothers! Revenge, husbands!" At the level of practice, however, there may have been considerable variation from such ideal norms. It is striking that the Augustan legislation tried toforce husbands to take legal action, and Greek sources testify that some men preferred "to hide their shame in silence" (Aeschines 1.107).7 As in other Mediterranean societies, these same classes of male relations bear the primary responsibility for the protection of women's chastity (PittRivers 1977,23; Campbell 1964, 271-278;Jamous 1981,66; Brandes 1975,227, 234-236). Ifthey fail to wreak vengeance, in theory their honorsuffers, though in practice, as Bourdieu has shown, norms can be manipulated to demonstrate that a particular case does not merit such a response. Another Controversiae (1 -4f.) emphasizes the humiliation ofa crippled husband unable to kill adulterers, who deride him. The standard also applies to brothers. In the Pro Sesdo, Cicero shows how one can attack a man's reputation through his sister's illicit sexuality, and particularly through his knowledge ofthe transgression and his failure to act on it.8 In another oration, he attacks a man's character by alleging that he tolerated his wife's lover, demonstrating that he was unfit for military leadership. Indeed, Cicero employs the same tactic again, attacking Verres for employing as a general a man who would tolerate such humiliation. He drives the point home by repeating again and again that Cleomenes was an aemulus for his own wife.

The lexJulia nicely captures this contradiction in the restrictions it applies to men who may be overzealous in shedding blood to protect their honor, and in the threat ofa charge ofpandering against men who do not take action against their wives. That this legislation did not entirely succeed in limiting husbands' revenge appears not only from the homicide cases against husbands reported in the Digest, but also from literary sources that emphasize the dangers of adultery. Juvenal (Satire 10. 162-178), for example, expatiates on the dangers of adultery, dangers represented by the vengeance ofthe husband in the form of death, torture, and humiliation that go beyond the penalties that the law allows (compare/)^. 48.5.24.3). Valerius Maximus (6.1.3) also recounts the infliction ofdegrading and unmanning punishments when husbands take revenge: whipping, castration, sexual abuse, and so on. Clearly, in spite ofthe prevalence of topoi about moral degeneracy, such accounts rest on the premise that some husbands, at least, were notso depraved that they ignored theirwives' adultery. For some men, the concepts of honor and shame still provided a normative orientation. Indeed, one ought to understand the lex Julia's limitation of the vengeance ofthe husband in this light. As Ulpian explains, the law limits the right of the husband to kill his wife and the adulterer, because a husband is naturally heated and impetuous (mariticaloretimpetus') in such matters. A father, however, will take counsel for the good of his children before acting. Again, this only makes sense in a moral world where the natural impulse of the husband is to avenge adultery with bloodthe world of honor and shame.

What all this means from the male point ofview is that, as Cicero (Cael. 1.1) puts it, the desires of women must be restrained. Ifthey are not, according to Cicero, the sexual misconduct of, for example, a mother brings dishonor to the whole family: it disgraces herself,-'the family, the lineage, and her son's name (Clu. 16. 188). According to the Mediterranean pattern, not only do women possess the power to wreak this havoc, but their nature constantly prompts them to do so. Juvenal's sixth satire, in a manner reminiscent ofAristophanes' catalogs of wives' deceits in Ecclesia^usae, Thesmophoria^usai, and Lysistrata, details at great length the way in which wives deceive and humiliate their husbands at every turn.10 Mothers, he claims (23 iff.), teach their daughters to delight in deceiving and despoiling their husbands, initiating these young women in the arts of adultery. The advice to husbands, as in so many other ancient and modern Mediterranean societies, is to keep their wives indoors if they want to keep them pure. "I hear the advice ofmy old friends: 'Bar the door and confine/restrain your wife.' But who will guard the guardians? The wife arranges accordingly and begins with them. High or low their passions are all the same. She who wears out the black cobblestones with her bare feet is no better than she who rides upon the necks oftall Syrians' (346-3 5 *).

Such passages accord well with the typical beliefofMediterranean men that their wives are prone to deceive them "forty times a day" (Campbell 1964, 278). As Stanley Brandes (1975, 228) reports, most Andalusian men maintain that their wives are either unfaithful or contemplating infidelity. Every man sees himselfas a potential cuckold. One might modify this claim slightly to say that men talk in public as ifthey believed that their wives were unfaithful. The point is that such public discourse about the rampant and treacherous sexuality ofwomen strongly resembles the male accounts offemale infidelity at Rome or Athens. Ifone takes eitherJuvenal's tale of horrors or the anxieties ofAndalusian husbands at face value, one would have to conclude that adultery was a nearly universal phenomenon.11 The problem is that such accounts are cultural interpretations ofideology and not the objective reporting ofsocial facts. Male ideology constrains men to view their wives in this way because ofthe enormous fear of the power of female sexuality to ruin them, and because ofthe difficulties ofcontrol, since male honor also requires that men spend their time out of the house, in the company of other men.12 Juvenal's argument that chastity is a value that women constantlyviolate as they deceive their husbands at every opportunity should, like the catalogs of adulteries in the Thesmophoria^usai, be viewed in this context.

This interpretation finds support in two other stereotypical elements ofthe portrayal ofthe dangers offemale sexuality. First, Juvenal, like other sources, expounds on the sexual insatiability of women.13 The view of women as possessing an unquenchable sensuality constitutes an element ofthe complex of beliefs and values associated with honor and shame from Morocco, Algeria, and Turkey, to Greece, Italy, and Andalusia.14 Not only does this sensuality fuel male anxieties about cuckoldry, but it has a darker side as well. Thus Juvenal recounts numerous stories of women who poison their husbands or other relations for depraved purposes. "Why tell oflove potions and incantations, ofpoisons brewed and administered to a stepson, or ofgrosser crimes to which women are driven by the imperious power ofsex? Their sins oflust are the least oftheir sins" (133-135; compare 610-661).

This murderous side of women's sexuality appears across the Mediterranean. Brandes recounts the widespread Andalusian male fear "that their wives crave to destroy them" and drive their men to early deathseither through incessant sexual demands or poisonso that they may pursue their sexual satisfaction unrestrained and enjoy their husbands' property (1980, io3ff., 224 226; compare Du Boulay 1974, 123). The anxieties are mutual and selfperpetuating, as John Campbell (1964, 276) demonstrates in relating how Sarakatsani maidens vow to hide a knife and castrate their husbands on the wedding night rather than submit. The cases in the early imperial period where adultery, poisoning, marital and political treachery, and treason all come together can, like Juvenal and much ofSuetonius, be read as a kind ofideological narrative of male anxieties and fantasies about dangerous, insatiable women, Roman equivalents of the Greek tales of Clytemnestra, the Danaides, or Medea. Whether the accusations are accurate in particular cases is irrelevantfor an appreciation oftheir ideological content.

This briefdiscussion has made clear that Roman sources evidence a characteristic connection between male honor and female sexuality. These sources also reveal how this connection depends on certain male conceptualizations of women's sexual nature, conceptualizations widely shared by other traditional Mediterranean societies. A final passage provides eloquent testimony to the way in which the various elements of this complex of beliefs, values, and practices interrelate. Tacitus (Ann. 3-33ff.) recounts a debate concerning whether wives should accompany their husbands on service abroad. The first speaker argues that women should remain at home. Women, he claims, must be kept under control and away from politics. Otherwise, their deceitful, scheming, and ferocious natures will.cause great harm, for they will intrigue, insinu ate themselves into political affairs, dominate men, and bring ultimate ruin. The second speaker proposes that women should be brought along but, significantly, shares the same underlying ideological premises as the other speaker: women are indeed prone to cause trouble, but it is the duty ofthe husband to control his wife. If she misbehaves, it is his fault. Further, if the husband is away, the weaker sex will be vulnerable to their own drives and to masculine desires. Men, he concludes implicitly, must control and guard their wives' sexuality to prevent moral ruin. This linkage of male honor and the maintenance ofthe social order to a view of dangerous female sexuality that must be regulated by men and confined to the private sphere places Roman society squarely within the Mediterranean context ofhonor and shame defined above.

THE AMBIGUOUS STATUS OF THE ADULTERER

Roman society, like most other Mediterranean cultures, placed considerable emphasis on public affirmations of masculine honor. Passivity and submissiveness, whether sexual or social, undermine the dominant, active masculine principle upon which honor rests. Accordingly, as in classical Athens, accusations ofsexual passivity furnished a common means of attacking one's opponent's reputation.15 It would seem to follow that one clear way of asserting one's masculinity would be to take the women of other men. In fact, this seems to be the case in both the ancient and the modem Mediterranean, which helps to explain why in both Athens and Rome some cuckolded husbands apparently sexually abused adulterers taken in the act. Yet though DonJuan, in the traditional understanding, enhances his honor by robbing other men of theirs, he is not a positively valued figure (Pitt-Rivers 1977, 23). Adultery may establish one's masculinity, but it also destroys families, encourages revenge and feud, and hence threatens the stability ofthe social order. Thus in many Mediterranean communities, though men may boast of their conquests in private to their closest friends, in public they do not express overt approval ofit as a general practice.

One finds some evidence ofthis ambivalence at Rome. Cicero, for example, deprecates opponents by references to their sexual misconduct, like rape and stuprum, which reflect on a man's integritas and pudor (Plane. 12.29; compare Seneca, Ben. 7.2.21). The accusation he levels against Verres is typical: whereas 1 in his youth he submitted to other men, as an adult he engaged in adultery and stuprum, ravishing the pudor and pudicitia ofothers (Terr. 2.5.13.34).16 Seneca addresses the issue specifically when he argues that a man is wrong to require chastity of his wife while he himselfis corrupting the wives of other men (Ep. 94.26; compare 95.57). Yet in so arguing he recognizes that many do not think this way, for example, men who desire the wives ofothers but suffer no one to look at their own wives (DeIra 2.28.7). In the same passage Seneca also refers to the competitive motivation that leads some men to adultery, when he comments that some men delight in adultery precisely because ofthe difficulty that it involves. These passages may explain why some men ran the considerable risks that adultery entailed, though the affective attachments which it could produce were surely a major factor. The fashionableness of adultery provided further impetus. Thus Seneca describes adultery as de rigeur among the elite: the man who grudges his wife the pleasure of appearing scantily clad in public is boorish (rusticus); ifhe refrains from adultery himself, orfrom giving money to his married paramour, he is viewed by other women as base and addicted to low pleasures and maidservants (Ben. 1.9.4).

Adultery, then, like other forms ofillicit sexuality, could in some contexts beconsidered conduct damaging to a man's reputation. Yet in other contexts neither these social norms nor the legal penalties ofthe lex Julia de adulteriis appear to have carried much weight with some Romans. Similarly, adulteresses may have, in theory, dishonored their families, but some women ofelite status, like Vistilia, appear not to have given the matter much thought. Moreover, whereas some husbands aimed to lay murderous hands on any men they found with their wives, others appear to have ignored, or even profited from, their wives adultery. What, ifanything, can one conclude from these contradictions? Are they merely a sign ofthe moral confusion and degeneracy ofthe times?

Three related factors help to account for these ambiguities and contradictions. First, as emphasized above, such conflicts are not exceptions requiring special explanation, but rather reflections ofthe nature ofsocial life. Only by focusing exclusively on ethical or cultural ideals are scholars able to identify a coherent system of values. But as Bourdieu and others have convincingly shown, such objective moral systems have little to do with the actual societies that they purportedly regulate. Instead of attempting to explain away such conflicts by claiming that one group ofsources is truly representative, whereas others are somehow aberrant, the historian should emphasize such cultural tensions. Roman society in this period was certainly not unique in manifesting them, forjust these ambivalences and anxieties about male and female sexuality characterize othertraditional Mediterranean communities.There was no single Roman attitude toward adultery, sexuality, or women, nor even a uniform attitude among the Roman elite toward these matters. Our sources reflect the complexity and richness of conceptualizations ofsexuality and gender among individuals, and even within the same individual in different contexts.

Second, part of the ambiguity arises from the difference between ideal norms and the norms ofsocial practice. Again, the historian risks reductionism by attempting to dismiss social practice as mere deviance from societal norms. The norms of practice together with cultural ideals and values constitute a dynamic system by which individuals orient their behavior and develop strategies for the manipulation ofthe normative expectations oftheir communities. Finally, comparative evidence strongly suggests the unrepresentativeness ofsocial elites. In many Mediterranean societies (as elsewhere), elites tend to be the most punctilious in matters of honor, but at the same time far less concerned than other social groups with community judgments and strictures on sexual freedom.

This does not imply that they act outside the system ofhonor and shame. On the contrary, they are among its most ardent supporters, for it buttresses their own social supremacy. This two-sidedness has typified most European aristocracies, and it surely plays an important role in the conflict one finds in Roman sources between evidence suggesting that traditional values were still intact and othertestimonia indicating moral degeneracy. That an individual like Augustus preached the sanctity ofthe marital bond in public and may have violated it in private is not mere hypocrisy, but rather a characteristic feature ofsuch culture complexes.

In short, our sources permit precious few (if any) generalizations about illicit sexuality in Roman society as a whole. Further, generalizations about the moral situation ofthe Roman elite should take into account the special nature of aristocratic values and practices. The evidence briefly reviewed above does not, in the end, support the view that the Roman aristocracy had abandoned traditional values and drifted into moral degeneracy. In fact, the values associated with honor and shame appear to have exercised considerable influence in evaluations ofsexual conduct. This ideology ofmale honor and female chastity, however, existed in a dynamic tension with other patterns ofvalues, beliefs, and practices. Neither Vistilia, nor the images of chaste and blushing matrons, by themselves tell the whole story.

THE FAMILY, SOCIAL POLICY, AND THE LEX JULIA DE ADULTERIIS

Scholars have advanced many interpretations concerning the legislative purpose behind the lex Julia. Jane Gardner (1986, 128) and Aline Rousselle (1988, 85-87) view it as intended "to preserve the chastity of women in marriage." Pal Csillag (1976, 54) holds that Augustus was responding to the utter disintegration of the Roman family and sexual morals. Thus, he concludes, the statute was designed by Augustus to be a powerful weapon against the corruption of the age. Norr (1977) emphasizes instead the legislation's regulatory nature under the rubric of state planning. Such a view, in my opinion, best clarifies some of the puzzling features of this legislation. If the primary purpose of the law was to strike fear into the hearts of prospective adulterers, why did it sharply limit the greatest dangers that they could incur?

The literary sources discussed above portray the severest threat as residing not in legal penalties, but rather in the death orsavage maltreatmentthat might result if an adulterer was taken in the act. The lex Julia, however, confined the father's right to a narrow set of unlikely circumstances and, in most instances, completely prohibited the husband's revenge (see Cantarella's chapter in this volume for a detailed discussion ofthe restrictions). Ratherthan enhancing the legal threat to adulterers, the lex Julia de adulteriis actually severely restricted it. Indeed, this restriction operated at the expense of the family, and it was surely this aspect that led Mommsen to call the legislation "eine der eingreifendsten und dauerndsten strafrechtlichen Neuschopfungen welche die Geschichte kennt [one of the most intrusive and long-lasting creations in criminal law in all history]" (1955, 691).

This intervention into what formerly had been a largely autonomous familial sphere may have aimed at restricting adultery, but not the way, for example, biblical legislation does. The biblical codes (Leviticus 20:10, Deuteronomy 22:22) also punish adultery by taking it out ofthe hands ofthe family, but they do so by superimposing a new, theologically determined sexual morality on the family-oriented values of honor and shame. The Deuteronomic and Levitical legislation punishes adultery with death not because of its contribution to social decay, but because it is an abomination, a sin, a transgression against God s commandment. Thus throughout the Old Testament prophets employ adultery as a metaphor for idolatry: Israel is the harlot or adulterous wife who turns away from God and goes whoring among the nations.18 The Augustan legislation, however, addresses social concerns. Adultery is symptomatic of, and contributes to, the degeneracy of an elite who are perceived as failing adequately to reproduce themselves as a social group. The punishment of adultery thus falls under the category of social policy, not sin and transgression.

This difference is significant, for it represents an important moment in the Western legal and political tradition. In spite ofsumptuary legislation and the like, in both classical Athens and republican Rome the family was perceived as a social unit enjoying a significant degree oflegal autonomy. In this regard, the lex Julia's restriction of the power of the family tribunal and the right of vengeance, its provisions for mandatory divorce and prosecution, its encouragement of informers, and so on, together with the Augustan marital legislation, represent a massive and deliberate appropriation by the state of a new regulatory sphere: marriage, divorce, and sexuality. Mommsen was right to see this as a radical intervention, and as Norr has pointed out, Augustus's contemporaries also viewed it that way. To use a Foucaultian vocabulary, the family, and the marital, reproductive, and sexual relations that it embodies, became the object of legal categorizations, official discourses, and political strategies of normalization, an axis of power and knowledge in the development of a new form ofgovernment. In this view, the lex Julia concerns far more than ensuring the chastity ofRoman women, far more than checking the moral corruption of the age. The appropriation ofthe family, sexuality, and reproduction for the purposes ofstate policy was not entirely successful, but it established a principle that, when adopted by a Christianized empire, would have far-reaching consequences.

Though beyond the scope ofthis paper, a few concluding remarks on the fateofthe Augustan legislation on adultery may be appropriate. Like all such attempts, ofcourse, the Augustan legislation necessarily failed to eradicate the conduct that it prohibited. Indeed, over the next centuries there was a growing trend toward severer penalties.'9 This movement perhaps culminated in the provision ofConstantius and Constans in 339, which not only called forsevere enforcement of the laws against adultery, but also decreed that adulterers be punished "as though they were manifest parricides," by being sown up in a leather sack and drowned.

The specific language ofthe provision is significant, for it refers to adulterers as the "sacrilegious violators of marriage." This statement appears to herald the shift in emphasis that Christianity brought to the prosecution of adultery. Constantine, ofcourse, had already restricted to the'immediate family the right to prosecute adultery, thereby reversing one ofthe major innovations of the lex Julia de adulteriis. It is noteworthy, however, that in doing so he placed the primary responsibility on the husband, whom he calls "the avenger of the marriage bed" {Cod. Theod. 9.7.2), a phrase taken up in the subsequent official discourse of adultery {Const. Sinn. 8; N. Maj. 9.1). In justifying ever severer punishments in the name ofa sacred marital chastity, Roman legislation incorporated the notion of adultery as sin and transgression that informed the Old and New Testament traditions.20 In this light, a provision enacted in 388 ordaining that a Jew who married a Christian woman be punished as an adulterer is surely significant {Cod Theod. This development reached its logical conclusion in legislation of Justinian, according to which a married woman convicted of adultery was to be confined in a convent for life. Because of the sanctity of marriage, however, if after two years her husband chose to remarry her, he could do so. Otherwise she remained immured.

In the end, then, the adulterer becomes less an offender who damages the social order by impeding the management of populations, and more a sacrilegious, heinous offender who destroys the chastity ofthe marriage bed and all that it represents. He is now like the Jew who pollutes the Christian union of man and woman. With the revival of Roman law in later periods, these two layers ofRoman strategies against adultery and sexual immorality provided a powerful heritage for those who would use the powers of church and state to create legal and institutional framework that, in the name ofseeking out sin, recognized no area of private conduct, discourse, or thought as beyond its reach. In the institutions ofthe penitential and the canon law, which regulated the entirety ofsexual, reproductive, and maritallife, the legal revolution ofthe Augustan legislation reached fruition in ways that its author had perhaps never imagined.