This chapter examines how the episode in Pliny Ep. 6.31.4−6 relates to Roman concepts of gender and warfare. The emperor Trajan judged the case of Gallitta, a military tribune’s wife who had committed adultery with a centurion. Since the reign of Augustus adultery had been criminalized. The Augustan legislation on marriage and adultery has received much scholarly attention, but relatively little has been paid to cases involving military officers. This study argues that the repression of adultery and the control of officers’ wives culturally maintained military discipline, in particular the hierarchy of command. Adultery in this instance subverted military hierarchy; the young officer’s cuckolding of his senior and his failure to display self-control vitiated his fitness for command. The stability of the imperial order depended on the reinforcement of normative gender roles on the frontiers as well as in the city of Rome.

Migration destabilized family life, gender, and sexuality. Whereas most Turkish guest workers traveled alone during the formal recruitment period (1961–1973), West Germany’s subsequent policy of family reunification sparked the increased migration of spouses and children. This chapter shows that, although migrants developed strategies to maintain connections to home, separation anxieties and fears of abandonment loomed. The departure of able-bodied young workers strained local economies, upended gender roles, and separated loved ones, sparking tensions at home: were guest workers sending enough money home, communicating enough, and remaining faithful to spouses? In Germany, reports about sex between male guest workers and German women fueled Orientalist tropes about “foreigners,” perpetuated stereotypes about Turkish men’s propensity toward violence, and stoked fears about the transgression of national and racial borders. Women left behind worried that their husbands would commit adultery while abroad. Guest workers’ children were viewed simultaneously as victims and threats: some stayed behind in Turkey, others were brought to Germany, and thousands of “suitcase children” (Kofferkinder) repeatedly moved back and forth between the two countries with their bags perpetually packed. As physical estrangement evolved into emotional estrangement, the perceived abandonment of the family came to represent the abandonment of the nation.

Through the energetic work of the reformer John Calvin, the small city-state of Geneva became the so-called Protestant Rome in the sixteenth century. Calvin created a morals court, the Consistory, which worked in conjunction with the city council to attack a wide range of ‘sins’, including illicit sexuality, defined as all sexual activity outside of marriage. In Calvin’s time, authorities pursued male and female fornicators (including fiancés) with the same rigour and on rare occasions sentenced adulterers to death. After Calvin’s death a double standard appeared in the treatment of adultery, most blatant in the fact that sexual relations between female servants and their married masters resulted in more severe penalties for the former than the latter. Same-sex relations were considered crimes against nature, but authorities adjudged those involving men much more severely than those involving women, probably based on a belief that sexual relations between male partners degraded them to the level of women. Although a few men were prosecuted for rape, religious and political authorities largely enhanced patriarchy; given the persistent numbers of people who were summoned, they clearly were also less successful in nurturing self-control among Genevans in their sex lives than in other areas of behaviour.

This chapter discusses social concepts, notions and assumptions that prevailed in the ancient Near East concerning human sexuality. Its introduction supplies chronological, geographical, and cultural definitions to explicate what is meant by the term ‘ancient Near East’, and expands on the sources of information used in the chapter, their contributions and limitations. The introduction also elaborates on the categories and aspects of human sexuality discussed in the chapter. Subsequently, the chapter is organized thematically. Each theme focuses on a specific category of sexuality, which is discussed according to the pertinent sources of information available to us, including legal, literary, cultic, and others. The categories surveyed in the chapter are: Sex and Reproduction, Sex and the Body, Gender Norms and Inequality, Sex and Marriage, Sex and Slavery, Sex and Politics, Sex and Religious and Cultic Practices, and Sex and Criminal Law. The chapter demonstrates how different textual genres reflect the role of sexuality in ancient Near Eastern societies: official law regulated sexual behaviour, literary texts echoed social norms, and cultic texts related to a variety of matters that involved human sexuality. The chapter highlights topics such as male privilege and gender inequality, social hierarchy, and cultural differentiation.

This chapter first looks at the primary sources available for the study of sexuality in Tenochtitlan in the sixteenth century, including paintings, sculptures, buildings, prayer books, legal codes, letters, chronicles, and judicial documents. Among the sources, the work directed by the Franciscan Fray Bernardino de Sahagún is the most prominent. The chapter then addresses Nahua principles of sexuality, which were linked to fertility, pleasure, and moderation in sexual activities. When the principle of moderation was not followed, the consequences could be fatal for the community. The differences between social classes in regard to how people should conduct their sexual lives are looked at next; then, the different sexual practices, paying particular attention to attitudes towards these in moral discourses and texts written shortly after the Spanish conquest. In particular, abundant information is given about adultery, prostitution, gender identity, and same-sex relations. Finally, discourses aimed at women exalted virginity before marriage and fidelity to one’s spouse afterwards. By contrast, discourses addressed to men acclaimed the early self-discipline that would be rewarded with a successful marriage and beautiful children.

Canon law rules of marriage became the legal means for policing forbidden sex in Iceland during the Middle Ages. These rules were adapted to various needs: enforcing morality, encouraging adherence to Christian sexual norms, and managing inheritance practices and property rights. This chapter explores sex in Iceland in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries by focusing on legal regulation, the archbishops’ and bishops’ statutes, and selected court cases. In all the Nordic countries the regulation of sexuality was highly influenced by canon law, but a study of sex in Iceland needs to be understood in relation to the special character of the society. It was highly literate, because of Christianity, but decentralized, with no towns and a distant royal administration. There had never been a strong executive authority in Iceland, and its absence seems to have encouraged widespread interest in documenting personal disputes and property rights. This makes Iceland special. Written documents and historical writing were mostly kept at the farms of leading families, for use in disputes over property rights in the local courts. This differs from more urbanized societies elsewhere in Europe.

The freedom and power of citizens was buttressed by the exclusionary effects on non-citizens. My reading of Apollodoros’ Against Neaira ([Dem.] 59) in Chapter 5 exemplifies the practical results of the ideology of freedom on all levels of Athenian society. The case calls into question the limits of citizenship and demonstrates how a status transgression can impair the jury’s own power. The prosecution speech alleges that Neaira, a resident foreigner, is guilty of pretending to be a citizen. As a foreign, female sex laborer, Neaira represents the antithesis of the model citizen. Neaira’s arrogation of citizenship privileges, however, gives her a measure of positive freedom and power. In contrast to other readings, I show that power struggles are crucial to analyzing the prosecution’s arguments. The prosecution attempts to show that instead of doing “whatever she wishes,” Neaira deserves to be subject to others doing “whatever they wish” to her. Apollodoros’ characterization of her transgressions as destabilizing citizenship indicates the centrality of autonomy and power to citizen identity. Hence, the importance of positive freedom was not simply theoretical, but practical.

This chapter re-examines Boccaccio’s naturalism and its putative connection to his feminism, disputing the claim that naturalism in the Decameron is inspired by Boccaccio’s advocacy for natural rights. Critics often celebrate the strong female protagonists of Bartolomea (2.10) and Madonna Filippa (6.7), who defend themselves against accusations of adultery, as evidence that Boccaccio was an early proponent for natural rights, especially the subjective rights of women. However, when Boccaccio gives his adulteresses a chance to finally speak, it is not to insist upon their subjective rights but to take a more unsettling stance: they rest their defenses on their status as socially valuable things. In both of these tales, the women situate their infidelity within a moral economy that views property relations from the ground up, vindicating the needs of things over the rights of individual owners. Having experienced the agricultural crisis wrought by the Plague, Boccaccio’s storytellers would have been especially receptive to such arguments for “adulterous” forms of possessing.

This chapter explores the legality of unions between racially heterodox people. It asks readers to consider miscegenation suits decided in the 1860s and 1870s solely in the context of Reconstruction-era efforts to achieve abolition. Observing the suits from this perspective reveals an important moment of flux in the history of American abolition and reveals the central arguments that would be used to undermine equal citizenship.

Ovid reinvented Roman cultural memory by re-constructing the memories of Servius Tullius, the sixth mythical king of Rome. In so doing, he joined historians, antiquarians, poets, and even the emperor Augustus in their efforts to rebuild and recover the Roman past.1 Furthermore, Ovid commemorated their collective endeavours in the Fasti, a didactic poem which discusses the aetiologies of Roman festivals (fasti) and highlights how Augustus appropriated Rome’s calendar by filling it with festivals dedicated both to his own achievements and those of his family, the domus Augusta.

The general matrix of medieval misogyny was based on women’s corporeal and moral inferiority as opposed to men, and found its ultimate biblical justification in the second version of the Creation (Genesis 2:18–23).1 After shaping [formavit] Adam from the slime of earth, God constructs [aedificavit] Eve from Adam’s rib, and she becomes bone of his bones, flesh of his flesh. Despite the existence of the first version (Genesis 1:27), where God creates [creavit] man and woman at the same time and to his image, the second version will position the female from the beginning as a bodily derivate of the male. This inferiority acquires further moral dimension with the Fall (Genesis 3:1–7): the serpent approaches Eve, who will eat from the forbidden fruit and give it to Adam. The female is the one who is responsible for the hardships and sufferings of earthly existence, because of her proneness to transgression and deceit. The widespread dissemination of this second version to all strata of society continued to maintain and reinforce negative stereotypical attitudes toward women in the Middle Ages and beyond.

Russian novels are in intense, ambivalent dialogue with the European tradition; Tolstoy’s take up the British and the French in particular. In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy reminds us that adultery is an ever-present threat in the British family novel, as it is in the novel of sensation. Like Tolstoy, Mrs. Henry Wood and Mary Elizabeth Braddon contrast the dynamics of different marriages. They also set adultery in the context of a system that works against women. In Wood’s East Lynne, Carlyle not only forgives his dying ex-wife, but declines to indict her former lover for murder; as he says, “I leave him to a higher retribution: to One who says ‘Vengeance is mine.’” This quote becomes Tolstoy’s epigraph.

Tolstoy’s works have been adapted into film more often than any other Russian writer except for Dostoevsky. This chapter covers Russian and world cinematic adaptations of War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Resurrection, and various shorter works of Tolstoy. Tolstoy’s novels, with their vast length, broad canvas, and complex plots, create unique challenges for prospective filmmakers. While some directors attempt to film his texts as closely as possible, others choose to single out particular aspects of his novels as their foci. Adapters of Anna Karenina, for instance, often focus almost exclusively on Anna and Vronsky’s love affair, while minimizing the plotline involving Levin. Cultural factors often come into play, for instance in Sergei Bondarchuk’s War and Peace, which adapts Tolstoy’s text in light of the Brezhnev-era demand for monumentalism, and for conveying the patriotic aspects of the novel. Shorter works such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich and The Kreutzer Sonata have inspired particularly creative approaches, as directors often freely combine Tolstoy’s short narratives with other texts and set them in remarkably different social, historical, and cultural contexts.

Known references to medieval marriage litigation in the kingdom of Castile are very rare, and information about it seems most readily available in the Roman registers of the Apostolic Penitentiary. Based on this testimony, it is possible to conclude that the typology of cases handled in Castilian bishoprics did not depart from what was common experience in church tribunals of the Latin West. At the same time, ecclesiastical control over marriage formation in Castilian society was minimal, and belief in marital consent as the collective concern of families was paramount. In addition, legislation provided support for alternative forms of intimate partnership. Often introduced under the names of barragania and mancebía, they defied sacramental permanence and monogamy by legalizing relations that were temporary and non-exclusive. Local (and Aragonese) notaries also registered service contracts stipulating sexual favors for a period against payment of a dowry. They articulated obligations of cohabitation with clergy in the sacred orders and husbands to a different woman, or they recorded the consensual breakup of couples short of priestly approval. The notarial output is clearly reflective of arrangements that altogether ignored church claims to undiminished jurisdiction over the validity of spousal ties.

delves more deeply into the role of biopolitics in community formation by studying, via criminal court records, how policy makers in practice connected or associated physical health threats to those to morality and social order. The convergence is particularly clear for three themes: poverty, leprosy and sexuality. These topics convey social groups who were each affected by a vision of a healthy, orderly and prosperous community. Policing the common good through targeting these groups was in many ways the same as performing community: it helped constituting civic conduct and moral leadership. Besides accentuating public health as a factor, the aim of this chapter is to show that the same system of reasoning and perception of community shaped attitudes toward each of these groups or issues. This reasoning was for the most part based on a medical, Galenic worldview, which is best summarised by the notion of dynamic balance. Balance can be understood as a tool in biopolitics, and it worked on two levels: the practical and the metaphorical. Analysing these two levels demonstrates how urban authorities integrated the eradication of sin as a part of their program to protect communal health.

Chapter 5 argues that food refusal resonates in the early modern theatre as a gendered mode of resistance. It begins by considering the contemporary phenomenon of 'miraculous maid' pamphlets, which recounted supposedly factual accounts of prodigious acts of religiously motivated food refusal. It then turns to Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603) and George Chapman’s The Widow’s Tears (1604). It places these plays in the context of changes to religious practice, contemporary understandings of the female body and the space of the household. It argues that in the context of female food refusal, hunger has the capacity to function as a form of parodic obedience to the norms of contemporary gender ideology. By carrying dictates of privacy and closure to a point of often terminal excess, these texts query or satirise the double standard within early modern English society.

Drawing on textual and material evidence, this chapter sketches the topography of different kinds of sex within the built environment of classical Athens. It also examines the role that the social and political structures of the city played in the sex lives of its citizens.

Although Roman criminal law differentiated between male and female offenders, women were not necessarily treated more leniently than men. Female sexual crime especially could be prosecuted in a visible manner and punished severely. This chapter discusses late antique families’ strategies for evading potentially humiliating public criminal process when it came to addressing the wrongdoing of female family members. Always a possibility in the accusatory criminal system of the Roman world, these strategies of evasion became increasingly formalised during late antiquity with the rise of ecclesiastical mediation. Such extrajudicial redress could result in women’s domestic seclusion. Towards the end of antiquity, female confinement was moved from the extrajudicial to the judicial sphere, with the introduction of the penalty of forced residence in a monastery. While forced residence in a monastery was seen as applicable to both male and female offenders, when applied to women it eased the pressures exerted by Roman law’s interference with intimate family affairs. In this way, the monastery became a locus of intersection between small-scale household-based and large-scale state acts of social control.