It was approaching closing time in the library when I happened to pick up the journal that was sitting in the rack directly in front of my nose. “Past and Present”, published by the Oxford University Press, turned out to cover an eclectic range of historical topics. Such as “Wife beating and manliness in late antiquity”.
Now the idea of a beating is rather disturbing: it implies a level of violence and degree of non-consent that’s not at all kinky. LOL I far prefer spanking. But some of the anecdotes in the article could certainly spark the pervy imagination.
Take something as simple as the law passed in 449AD in the eastern Roman empire by Theodosius II:
A wife could divorce her husband with full return of her dowry ‘if she could prove that he has inflicted flogging (verbera) on her’… The term ‘verbera’ imples that the type of beating imagined was with whips or canes, long associated with slaves.
Wannabe slave girls form an orderly queue, please!
But in the next century, Justinian’s legislation…
…rescinded a wife’s right to repudiation, but gave her the recourse of a heavy fine on an abusive husband. Wives whose husbands beat them with ‘whips or sticks” (‘flagellis aut fustibus’) could demand compensation equivalent to a third of their bride gift.
The fine was only to be paid if the beating took place ‘without any of the reasons which we have ordered would suffice for the dissolution of a marriage against wives’. The implication here is that husbands were within their rights to whip or beat wives who had given them serious grounds to suspect infidelity, such as dining or bathing with other men, or spending the night away from home without the husband’s permission.
Spending the night away with the husband’s permission was presumably fine. (Hey, perhaps the Romans tolerated poly relationships!)
Meanwhile, in the western empire, the law was a little stricter. Augustine of Hippo describes how a husband was supposed to deal with misbehaviour:
If he found his wife…looking through the window excessively, he would correct her not only with words but with blows. Yet if she should say to him, “why are you beating me”… then he should consider… how he might deliver just floggings for the correction of his own family.
The wife in this anecdote commits two faults – looking out of her window too often (behaviour associated with prostitutes) and talking back to her husband when he tries to correct her. Here, as elsewhere, Augustine considers such corporal discipline of a wife to be perfectly acceptable, a necessary part of men’s oversight of their households…
Apparently, “Augustine considered corporal discipline, when motivated by the desire for correction, to be a sign of affection”, and quite right too!
OK, hands up who else found the Latin phrases hot!
I like Justinian – he could spank me just for the fun of it, but then he would have to give me lots of nice things to make up for it – I win both ways!!
Hae fabulae ferventissimae sunt!
Muahahaha. I had the option of doing Latin in school and very wisely decided not to. I swear it’s one of the smartest things I’ve ever done. I might have died with boredom otherwise. So you can utter all your Latin phrases and I’ll just sit here and laugh at you, if that’s alright?
Slightly off topic I suppose, but advice given to me is that one needs to use the correct word for various implements.
So, one gets spanked with his hand, whipped with his whip or cane, paddled with his paddle or the hairbrush and so on. I’m not aware if one is beaten with anything in particular (the carpet beater?), but like you, it does imply something just too nasty really (though it can work for kinky story writing).
Augustine may have been a modern thinker, in his own way. I suppose it is conceivable that he had knowledge of women even then who didn’t mind a little corporal discipline.
When I first was introduced to LDD a few months ago, I searched for “Domsetic Discipline” on the NY Times website. I thought since this topic is all over the Internet that surely the NY Times would have stories about ti. What a surprise to find nothing newer than 1900 or so. Check it out.
Candycane is cleverer than all the rest of us. (*What* does that mean).
Interesting though, Rob, on relevant words. I guess a girl can be flogged or thrashed with just about anything; I rather agree with you on the others. I now feel like drawing up a table of implements and verbs, and showing which can rightly be used with which! (Smudge is staying this weekend – perhaps I should experiment: “Come here and be birched with the paddle”).
Pammie – I’ve just done a search, and can see hours of interesting reading ahead! Thank you
It means “These stories are very very hot”, Mr Latin Master, Sir!
Very nice, Candycane!
I could say something very dirty in Latin, but perhaps I had better not!
I can’t believe I missed this, before! Latin phrases are hot, hot, hot! Thanks for this post!