RSS Feed

OE Companion Discussion Group

The confining of her hair signified the harnessing of her sexuality inside of marriage. Sexuality was a "main attribute" of ancient Roman slavery. According to Cato (2nd century BC), a spouse had an historic right (ius) to destroy his wife if he caught her in the act of adultery, but if this "proper" existed, it was a issue of personalized and not statute regulation. It is too substantially the tailor made with writers, to speak in these general terms of the loveliness of the feminine character as if female have been some fragrant flower, developed only to bloom, and exhale in sweets: when possibly these pretty writers are them selves most strict in necessitating that the domestic drudgery of their individual households should each day be faithfully stuffed up. No supply documents the justified killing of a female for adultery by both a father or spouse all through the Republican era, even though adultery was grounds for divorce. The cultivation of a laissez-faire mindset as a signal of urbanity could have prompted the provision of Augustus' adultery legislation that necessary a partner to divorce his spouse and deliver formal legal expenses against her, or deal with expenses himself for pimping (lenocinium).