Are they and welcome to Emperor's of Rome, a Roman history podcast from Latrobe University.

I'm your host Matt Smith and with me today is Dr.

Rianna Evans, senior lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at Latrobe University.

This is episode CXX.

Adultery.

By modern standards the Romans had some fairly unusual ideas

which could be putting it mildly when it comes to the subject of adultery.

Now for the most part the Romans seem

fairly lax in repercussions when it came to who was shaking who, unless of course

you were embarrassing a man of high status. Here's Rianna Evans.

Adultery is having sex outside of marriage, but it does particularly apply to married women in Roman culture.

So for a man, having sex with a woman or with a boy was not

considered adultery as long as that woman or boy is in the right category to not have any rights that matter.

In other words, if that woman is a slave or a woman of very low status

or something like an actress or a shopkeeper, that's fine as far as the Romans care.

If the woman is married to another man, then it is adultery.

So it's only really adultery for a married woman in all cases.

For a man there are certain categories of other people that he can sleep with,

but he can commit adultery if it's with another woman who is also married. They would call that

adulteria on his part. Okay so there's good adultery and bad adultery.

Yeah and they wouldn't call it adultery if it's the good kind. It's acceptable.

Okay. It's never acceptable for a married woman.

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