ĂDULTĔRĬUM

adultery. (1) Greek. —Among the A then i ans, if a man caught another man in the act of criminal intercourse ( μοιχεία ) with his wife, he might kill him with impunity; and the law was also the same with respect to a concubine ( παλλακή ). He might also inflict other punishment on the offender. It appears that there was no adultery, unle a married woman was concerned. The husband might, if he pleased, take a sum of money from the adulterer, by way of compensation, and detain him till he found sureties for the payment. The husband might also prosecute the adulterer in the action called μοιχείας γραφή . If the act of adultery was proved, the husband could no longer cohabit with his wife, under pain of losing his privileges of a citizen ( ἀτιμία ). The adultere was excluded even from those temples which foreign women and slaves were allowed to enter; and if she was seen there, any one might treat her as he pleased, provided he did not kill her or mutilate her.—(2) Roman. —The word adulterium properly signifies, in the Roman law, the offence committed by a man’s having sexual intercourse with another man’s wife. Stuprum (called by the Greeks φθορά ) signifies the like offence with a widow or virgin. In the time of August us a law was enacted (probably about B.C. 17), entitled Lex Julia de adulteriis coercendis , which seems to have contained special penal provisions against adultery; and it is also not improbable that, by the old law or custom, if the adulterer was caught in the fact, he was at the mercy of the injured husband, and that the husband might punish with death his adulterous wife. By the Julian law, a woman convicted of adultery was mulcted in half of her dowry ( dos ) and the third part of her property ( bona ), and banished ( relegata ) to some miserable island, such as Seriphos, for instance. The adulterer was mulcted in half his property, and banished in like manner. This law did not inflict the punishment of death on either party; and in those instances under the emperors in which death was inflicted, it must be considered as an extraordinary punishment, and beyond the provisions of the Julian law. The Julian law permitted the father (both adoptive and natural) to kill the adulterer and adultere in certain cases, as to which there were several nice distinctions established by the law. If the wife was divorced for adultery, the husband was entitled to retain part of the dowry. By a constitution of the Emperor Const an tine, the offence in the adulterer was made capital.