Consent and Coercion to Sex and Marriage in Ancient and Medieval Societies

The essays in this volume form a triptych, with four papers on Antiquity and four on the Medieval West framing the centrepiece, a 112-page monograph by the editor, Angeliki Laiou. Most of the papers concern what today would be called rape, and point up the cultural relativism of the idea of 'consensual sex' and the difficulty of distinguishing 'rape' from 'seduction' in societies with different sexual constructs. David Cohen discusses the Athenian concept of hybris in regard to sex with a man, woman, or child. The important factor was not the use of violence or absence of consent, but the aggressor's intent to assert power and dishonour the victim. Mary Lefkowitz takes issue with what she describes as 'the common assumption that Greek mythology effectively validates the practice of rape' (17). Richard Sailer's 'The Social Dynamics of Consent to Marriage and Social Relations: the Evidence of Roman Comedy' provides a sensitive and illuminating reading of the tension between the theoretically unilateral right of a.paterfamilias to determine his child's marriage partner and the reciprocal obligations oipietas and officium. Diana Moses links Livy's Lucretia narrative to an abortive early attempt by Augustus to introduce moral legislation. M. suggests that Lucretia's insistence that unchaste women in the future should not be able to cover up consensual stuprum by false allegations of rape (Livyi.58) implies that Livy questioned the efficacy of legal remedies for immorality when the guilty could excuse their actions. One wonders, however, whether debate over the validity of acts effected under 'coerced consent' had evolved as far as she claims by Augustus' day. Laiou's interesting and sophisticated 'Sex, Consent and Coercion in Byzantium' employs legal, ecclesiastical, and literary sources to analyse attitudes toward rape, seduction, and abduction in the Byzantine Empire. Constantine's edict on raptus (on which seeJRS 79 (1989), 59-83) which punished the victim, represents an aberration in the legal sources but reflects 'a deeply engrained persuasion' that a woman 'is never really and truly forced' (194). L. suggests that Christian emphasis on internal motivation and personal responsibility combined with a (presumably much older) belief that women were polluted and dishonoured by illicit sex to bring about a harsher view of the seduction of unmarried women. The volume closes with discussions df consent in the Medieval West by Suzanne Wemple (Germanic kingdoms), James Brundage (canon law), John Baldwin (northern France around 1200) and Jenny Jochens (Old Norse society).