What was the penalty for adultery in Ancient Rome?

[Roman Emperor]

I am writing a research paper on the changes made to Roman law by Theodosius I. But one of his new statutes stuck out to me. It was a decree in 388 A.D. which banned interfaith marriages between Christians and Jews. The law says that anyone who enters into such marriages will be punished as if the crime was adultery. So what was the penalty for adultery, and therefore, the punishment for this law? Was it a death sentence? A fine? Exile? I've done a lot of searching and can't find anything concrete. Thanks!

[Melvadius]

Although there are probably more recent writings on the topic and possibly different interpreatations for later periods the LacusCurtius site has this item on adultery from the William Smith 1875 dictionary which may be helpful if you haven't seen it already.

 

I did find a this articles on the web which may also be of interest:

 

As to the Julian law concerning Adultery and seduction

[Scipio44]

I am writing a research paper on the changes made to Roman law by Theodosius I. But one of his new statutes stuck out to me. It was a decree in 388 A.D. which banned interfaith marriages between Christians and Jews. The law says that anyone who enters into such marriages will be punished as if the crime was adultery. So what was the penalty for adultery, and therefore, the punishment for this law? Was it a death sentence? A fine? Exile? I've done a lot of searching and can't find anything concrete. Thanks!

it depended on how serious if it was a simpl adultury act then fin

if marrige its exile

if marrige and audultry then possible death

this also depended on social status

if high on the social ladder the posibility of the death penelty and exile were high

if lower not so much mostly fins

if it was mixed then it gets very complicated

[caldrail]

Mostly the punishment was divorce and public ignomy, though I accept legal punishments were in place. Wouldn't the punishment also depend on the degree of adultery? The status of the individuals, the extent of skulduggery, and what the adulterer stood to gain?

[Klingan]

Caesar divorced his wife Pompeia on the (very dubious) suspicion of adultery:

 

Caesar divorced Pompeia at once [after the incident], but when he was summoned to testify at the trial, he said he knew nothing about the matters with which Clodius [the accused adulterer] was charged. His statement appeared strange, and the prosecutor therefore asked, "Why, then, didst thou divorce thy wife?" "Because," said Caesar, "I thought my wife ought not even to be under suspicion."

 

Plutarch - Life of Caesar, X. 8-10

[Melvadius]

The Smith dictionary (linked ot above) carries a lot of interesting information on this topic if you go through it including a couple of sections to the effect that:

 

A father could kill his married daughter and her paramour if he caught them in the act in either his own or his son in law's house but her husband was only allowed to kill the paramour int he same circumstances if he was a panderer, actor, dancer, currently convicted of a public crime without his rights restorered one of the families freedmen or a slave.

 

However the killing had to be undertaken then and there while a husband couldn't continue living with his wife after being made aware of such adultery - if he didn't divorce her he could be punished as a panderer himself.

 

Obviosuly there is a lot more to this and the laws were subject to change and some aspects were reinterpreted over time.

[caldrail]

The right of a father to kill household and family members is a very old tradition in Roman culture but not one often carried out in practice, mostly because the act, however legal, carries accusations of cruelty and barbaric behaviour in terms of public image. I would hazard a guess that most incidents came from the lower classes rather than patricians, who had more to lose from bad reputation and rumour than those classes of societies who were almost anonymous in the record as much as social standing.

[Maty]

If we consider Valerius Maximus 6.1.13 the offended husband could take matters into his own hands. VM cites cases of two men who were castrated as adulterers, and one Cn Furius Brocchus was handed over to the household slaves to be raped.

[caldrail]

Granted, yet I notice the relatively rare mention of such things, and as far as I can gather, with the demise of Roman morality from late republic onward (mostly associated with the prosperous early principate but co-existent with christian standards in later times from the evidence of surviving sermons), there was even less desire to undertake the deed. You might think a less restrictive moral stand would mean an incresed prediliction to violentce, but the opposite is true. Harsh retribution is more indicative of harsher moral stance, consistent with what I read of the earlier republican periods.

[Onasander]

I would find the law against Christian vs Jewish weddings hard to enforce.... Christians didnt have to be circumcised, so be the male or female a jew, once called on it, they could simply claim to be Christian. Its not like it was taboo within christianity to convert Jews,, given Christianity's origins.

 

Harder to convince a synogogue, especially if your a uncircumcised male asked to whip it out for proof, but I suspect jews back then were as sporty as they are now, and you could easily outrun them. Offspring from a formerly jewish mother could be passed on as jewish if she claimed them as jews, cause thats the jewish tradition.

 

Honestly, tensions would have to be very rough, like in the movie Agora bad, for two such closely related communities to want to target cross-religious marriages. The Romeo and Juliet kind of bad.