Augustus and the Roman Adultery Law: Social Death

[00:00:00]Imagine you walk into a house. There are no screams, [music] no fight, no scene of jealousy. There is a father, a daughter, and the man she's been caught with. Under Roman law, he has the right to kill them both right here. No trial, no let's sort this out. And the scariest part isn't that he can. It's that the [music] state practically pushes him to do it. Because if he keeps quiet, if he looks the other way, the punishment may fall on him. This isn't a scene from a trashy soap opera. This is the reality of Augustus' laws. That very same father of the nation who built a golden age and at the same time signed one of the harshest sexual morality [music] laws in history. Today, we're going to see how in Rome, punishment for [music] adultery sometimes turned death into a gift. How the law forced fathers to become executioners of their own children and husbands, [music] witnesses of the disgrace they were obliged to report to the state. And why sometimes exile, confiscation, and public shame were worse than a sword blow. Watch until the end. By the conclusion, you'll understand that the fear of catching a bullet is nothing compared to what Roman society could do to you if you climbed into the wrong bed. To understand how a law could appear in Rome that allows a father to kill his daughter for adultery, [music] we have to start with two things. The romantic myth of Augustus and the cold reality of the Roman family. Let's start with Augustus.

[00:01:19]Formerly, he's the first emperor, but he doesn't call himself that. He's the princip.

[00:01:25]the man who supposedly just restores order [music] after the civil wars. In practice, he's building a new system of power, and he needs not only an army and officials, but also an ideology. Rome is [music] exhausted. Behind it are decades of slaughter, prescriptions, brother against brother, [music] allies betraying each other for a golden list name. Society has to be cemented somehow. Augustus picks a simple formula. [music] We're going back to the old virtues. family, faithfulness, marital purity, lots of legitimate children, reverence for the gods, and no wild living that eats the republic from the inside. [music] In speeches, it sounds beautiful. In practice, it turns into a set of brutally harsh laws.

[00:02:06][music] One of the key ones is the Julian law on the suppression of adulteries. In Latin, [music] lexulia de adulteres. It was passed under Augustus at the end of the first century before our era around 18 BC when he launched a whole package of marriage morality reforms. On paper, it's a law that protects marriage and morals. In reality, it's a legal hammer that hits in three directions. [music] Women, their husbands, and their fathers. And here the second theme kicks in. The Roman family. A Roman household is not mom, dad, and kids. It's a small state.

[00:02:38][music] At the top is the father of the family, the patioas. He has almost absolute power over the household. He owns the property. He decides whom to marry, whom to give in marriage, whom to recognize as a child, whom to cut out of the inheritance. In theory, he can even condemn his own children to death for serious crimes. It's an ancient right that by the time of Augustus is almost never applied literally, but as an idea, it's [music] alive. The father is not just a relative. He is half judge, half king in his home. Augustus logic is this. If we want a healthy society, [music] we have to force men to take responsibility for their women, not just watch them, but prove to the state that they do not tolerate shame. If they don't, then they themselves are guilty.

[00:03:22]Out of this grow their harshest points of the law. Now, let's go step by step through what was actually considered adultery in Augustus' understanding. For a man, the situation was very flexible.

[00:03:33]A Roman citizen could freely go to prostitutes, have concubines, sleep with slave women, and formally this was not considered a crime against marriage.

[00:03:42]Morally, people might look at you sideways, but a jurist wouldn't come for you. The main thing was not to touch another citizen's wife, not to mess with respectable girls under a father's authority, not to create public scandals. For a woman, [music] it was completely different. Augustus' law turned almost any sexual relationship between a married woman and another man into a crime. If you're married and sleep with someone who isn't your husband, that's adultery. If you're officially betrothed [music] and behave in a way that's only allowed in marriage, you've got a problem. If you're divorced but considered respectable and openly live a promiscuous life, you could through a lawsuit be declared virtually a prostitute and stripped of the rights of a decent woman. The key point, the law turns a woman's sexual fidelity from a private matter between two people into an issue of state importance. It's no longer just he cheated on you, you're hurt. It's you broke the order and that requires official punishment. And now the raw meat of it, what awaited those who fell under this law. Imagine the scene. The husband comes home. He finds his wife in bed with another man. And attention shock number one to modern perception. He does not have the right to just [music] grab a sword and slaughter everyone. For the husband, Augustus' law actually sets boundaries.

[00:05:00]He can immediately throw his wife out of the house, file for divorce, lock her up, and he is obliged within a set period. Jurists talk about roughly 60 days either to denounce her himself in court, or let her father do it. If the husband keeps quiet, if he forgives and continues to live with her, he himself becomes an offender. The state tells him, "You're not just a cookold. [music] You're an accomplice. You're obliged to throw her out of your life and bring her before our court. If not, we [music] will punish you as well." The ultimate humiliation. They turn you not only into a victim of infidelity, but also into a policeman who has to inform on his own wife and in some cases into a spectator of her public disgrace. Now, the father, here the hook we mentioned at the start kicks in. the law that forced fathers to become executioners of their own children. If a father caught his daughter in his own house, in his presence, in the act of adultery, he had that special right to kill her and her lover on the spot, not kill her sometime later, not think about it. Exactly at the [music] moment he catches them inside his house with the obvious fact of adultery. Roman jurists filled this with conditions. He could kill only in his own house, only a daughter under his power, that is formerly not emancipated.

[00:06:20]The lover only if he was of worthy status, a citizen, not say a slave, [music] and he had to do it immediately.

[00:06:26]If he waited, it fell outside just wrath. But the essence is this. The state writes into law not just the possibility, but a formulated right of the father to be an executioner. The scene sends a chill down your back. You don't just lose a daughter. you kill her with your own hands and then still go out to society and say, "I acted according to the law." And the creepiest part is that sometimes this was actually more advantageous than letting the case go to court. Because what followed can fairly be called a slow [music] social execution. So what happened if the case did reach an official trial? A Roman court on adultery was not a cozy little room where two people argue quietly. It was a public [music] spectacle. The charge. Such and such woman, wife of such and such, committed adultery with such and such. Witnesses are gathered.

[00:07:12]They discuss who saw her, where, and when. All the dirty laundry is dragged into the light. The goal is not just to record the fact, but to publicly throw the woman beyond the line of respectable society. The sentence in its [music] classic form included banishment, exile, usually not extremely harsh in living conditions, but [music] with a key nuance. No right to live in major cities, partial confiscation of property, part to the state, part to the offended husband, part to others under the scheme, a ban on entering a new marriage with a man of certain rank, loss of status. [music] You earned a stain comparable to the disgrace of prostitutes and actresses. Take the famous case of [music] Augustus's own daughter, Julia the Elder. According to the sources, she lived, to put it mildly, very freely. Lovers night outings onto the forum. Jokes like, "How do I have children if I've never seen my husband sober and by daylight?"

[00:08:06]Augustus, who pushed this adultery law through, suddenly realizes that his own daughter falls under it. He cannot not notice, otherwise the whole image of moral crusader collapses. In the end, she is officially accused. She ends up exiled to the island of Panditaria.

[00:08:22]Stripped of most of her contacts, living under guard, losing the right to a normal [music] life in society.

[00:08:27]Formerly, she is not executed.

[00:08:30]Physically, she is alive, but it's life in a cage. A life where from beloved daughter, you become a living symbol of disgrace. Her daughter Julia the Younger was no more fortunate for similar [music] accusations exile again and according to some sources death from exhaustion in confinement. Augustus's law works even on his own blood. And that's the perfect example. You can be the daughter of the father of the nation and still your fate is not death but a long social execution. Now let's go back to an ordinary woman. After the trial, they can evict her from the city, divorce her from her husband, forbid her to marry a senator or an equestrian, leave her with the bare minimum of money, mark her forever as a woman who has lost her respectability.

[00:09:14]In a society where reputation is [music] everything, that is worse than simply ceasing to exist. You cannot return to your former circle. You're not invited to festivals. [music] Your children grow up with the brand of your shame.

[00:09:25]Everyone knows what you are condemned for. In Rome, death is a full stop.

[00:09:30]Augustus's [music] adultery law often turned punishment into an ellipsis. Now, let's talk about another brutal side of this story. The husbands. We've already said it. The husband has no right to simply remain silent. But his suffering doesn't end there. If he doesn't manage to bring his wife to court in time, doesn't throw her out of the house, doesn't distance himself publicly from her, he can himself be accused of harboring depravity. He becomes almost an accomplice. In some cases, [music] the law literally forced him to take part in the staging of disgrace. He had to formally divorce her, give back part of the dowy, support the accusation.

[00:10:06]Imagine you love your wife. You understand she stumbled. Maybe you weren't [music] an angel either, but the state tells you either you dump her and drag her to court or we will punish both of you. The husband turns into the mandatory witness of his own humiliation. He doesn't have to kill like the father, but he becomes the one who starts the penal machine. If [music] he tries to save her, she will be punished anyway and the delayed blow will hit him too. Thus, the law breaks three lives at once. The woman's through direct punishment, the husbands, by forcing him to take part, the families, because after that, nothing can be glued back [music] together. And that is very Roman to punish not only the offender, but also the one who didn't react properly. The state says it's not enough that you don't commit adultery. You must also punish those who do. And still, where is death in this system? Execution for adultery under Augustus's law was not the norm, but more an extreme case.

[00:11:02]The standard package was exile, confiscation, shame, but death was still present, sometimes directly, sometimes in the form of voluntary exit, which the Romans were very good at hinting at.

[00:11:14]Some men involved in a dirty scandal preferred to go themselves [music] so as not to drag their family into the public meat grinder. Some women finding themselves with their names destroyed chose suicide rather than live as a walking mark of disgrace. Legally, the state can preserve your life.

[00:11:30]Psychologically and socially, it [music] destroys it. Against that background, it becomes very clear why the father's right to kill on the spot could appear not only horrific, but paradoxically the simpler option. No long trials, no private filth aired in the forum, no years of exile. There's a terrible but quick end. [music] And here the key idea of our video becomes clear. In Rome under Augustus, death was far from the worst punishment. Much more frightening was living after the trial. Living when the law has turned you into walking shame. Let's sum up what exactly the adultery law did to a person in Rome. It turned the father into a potential executioner, giving him the right to kill his daughter and her lover on the spot [music] if he caught them in his house in the act of adultery. Forced the husband to be the accuser, making him a partner of the law. If he didn't denounce, he's guilty. If he forgave, he's punished. If he kept silent, [music] he's suspect. Turned female sexuality into a matter of state security. Moving adultery from the sphere of private into a public crime.

[00:12:30]Punish not only the body, but the status with exile, confiscation, bans, a stigma you couldn't wash off, hit the family.

[00:12:38]Children lost their mother, the husband, his wife [music] and his face, the father, his daughter, and peace of conscience. the lineage, its honor. Rome loved to call itself a kingdom of laws.

[00:12:50]But behind that stood one thing. The law could force you to do what [music] you would never do of your own free will.

[00:12:56]Augustus came up with a law that worked exactly like that. Fathers became judges and executioners of their children.

[00:13:02]Husbands were forced to drag their pain out into the public square, and women [music] turned into living examples of how the state controls even the bed. And in that world, death sometimes [music] looked more honest. A dagger thrust, veins opened in warm water, [music] a single step off the roof. That is a full stop. Everything else is a long sentence [music] where every morning you wake up not as a living person, but as the one charged under Augustus' law. And here's the main question for you. If you had lived in that room, what [music] would you fear more? the law itself.

[00:13:38]>> [music]