While meandering around the classical blogosphere this morning, I came across a spectacular piece of commentary by Mary Beard, a well-known Cambridge classicist. Here’s an excerpt:

The real challenge, to take my own case, is how to stop men thinking that it is still on the margins of acceptability to pick up an exhausted student on Milan railway station, buy her a bed in a Wagon Lit, and then have (unwanted) sex with her on the way to Rome. Prosecution isn’t the only point.

Regular readers of this blog will now be expecting the ancient angle on all this. In fact the ancient debates were almost as complicated as our own, though concerned with rather different issues.

It is often said that in Athens, at least, the idea of women’s consent played no part in the control of sexual violence. That is true in the sense that the attitude of the woman’s guardian was what seems to have counted: even heterosexual rape in Athens was an issue between men. Some Athenians could even claim that seduction was worse than rape – in the sense that seducers actually won over the mind of the woman (another man’s property) to themselves.

But across the ancient world (and even in Athens) it wasn’t quite so simple.

In examining the potential problems with new consent laws in Britain, Mary Beard describes some of the most troubling and intriguing issues that surrounded rape in the ancient world. It’s well worth reading.

While I was initially troubled by her negative reaction to a law that would make it impossible for a woman to legally give consent when drunk, I can see that legislation might not be the best response to the issue of consent. This is not to say that someone can give consent when drunk, of course– rather, that the problem would be better dealt with by making people aware that drunken consent is not consent. Legislation in this case, I fear, would simply restrict behavior without necessarily reducing the number of rapes. Mary Beard’s comment on the ad campaign (see right) being conducted by the British government— “the ‘no entry’ sign stamped on the woman’s pants still suggests that the main reason you might not have sex with her is simply that you might find yourself in the dock if you did”— goes just as well for this particular piece of rape law. It would stop someone from committing rape only by inculcating a fear of being convicted, not by any increase in the general understanding of why non-consensual sex is wrong. We need to educate people, not simply describe women as “off-limits”.

Of course, the ancients (as Mary Beard astutely points out) had entirely different concerns in the question of rape. A woman’s marriage status (in both Greece and Rome) had far more influence than any question of consent on whether the act was permissible. A particularly disturbing case, unmentioned by Mary Beard, is that of Lucretia, best-known through Livy’s discussion in the Ab Urbe Condita. Her rape occurs at the end of the reign of Tarquinius Superbus, the tyrannous last king of Rome, and is actually a major catalyst for his removal from power.

Livy describes the king’s son Sextus Tarquinius getting together with several of his friends, all of whom boast about how faithful and diligent their wives are. To settle the contest, the young men go and visit each of the wives, all of whom are feasting and enjoying themselves without their husbands— except for Lucretia, the wife of Collatinus, who is still diligently working at her loom despite the time. Sextus immediately decides to have sex with Lucretia, and so the next night, when he knows Collatinus will be away, he returns to Lucretia’s home. Having gone into her bedroom, he threatens her with a sword, stating that he’ll kill her if she does not have sex with him. Lucretia, however, refuses. Sextus then threatens to kill her, kill one of her slaves, and leave the body next to her— which would imply that he found the pair in adultery, and killed them both. Lucretia, far more afraid of this potential dishonor, is then raped by Sextus. The next day, she calls for her father and her husband Collatinus to come to her, and tells them everything that has happened.

They all successively pledged their word, and tried to console the distracted woman , by turning the guilt from the victim of the outrage to the perpetrator, and urging that it is the mind that sins not the body, and where there has been no consent there is no guilt.

‘It is for you,’ she said, ‘to see that he gets his deserts: although I acquit myself of the sin, I do not free myself from the penalty; no unchaste woman shall henceforth live and plead Lucretia’s example.’

She had a knife concealed in her dress which she plunged into her, heart, and fell dying on the floor. Her father and husband raised the death-cry.
(Ab Urbe Condita I.58, Livy, trans. Canon Roberts.)

This story’s outcome is deeply troubling. On the one hand, Lucretia’s father and husband are well ahead of their time in assuring Lucretia that she isn’t guilty of adultery, since she didn’t consent– a concept plenty of people still have trouble with today. The fact that she needs their assurances of her innocence, however, is disconcerting. She describes the incident to Collatinus by saying that “the mark of another is in your bed”– an indication that rape was considered more of a violation of a husband’s property than a woman’s body and mind. Yet there is still an onus of guilt on Lucretia to pay for the dishonor, and she frames her suicide in the idea of preventing other, less honorable women from abusing such an “excuse” for their own crimes. Lucretia’s suicide is also deeply necessary to Livy’s history– Collatinus goes on to swear revenge on the Tarquins for their offense against his wife, and becomes one of the first two Consuls of Rome after Tarquinius Superbus is expelled. Despite all of her family’s assurances that she need not die, the sense that Lucretia’s suicide is somehow “right” or “necessary” is solidly embedded in the story– she is considered even more honorable for having punished herself, and she provides the necessary catalyst for the rebellion against Tarquinius Superbus.

I’ve never quite been sure what to make of Livy’s story of Lucretia. I enjoy Livy’s history immensely (I am evidently among the few in that regard), yet I find this particular legend as repulsive as can be. One is left wondering whether Lucretia killed herself out of shame, or whether her suicide was coerced in some more subtle manner; her character is so clearly molded to Roman ideals that it is difficult to tell whether her motivations can be real in any way. Regardless, most of the facts at the root of the legend were probably lost long before Livy researched his history. Whatever understanding we glean from the legend is, unfortunately, limited by the unreliability of our source in Livy, and of Livy’s original sources.

It’s a frustrating topic to examine, given that we have no sources describing a woman’s perspective of rape in the ancient world. Male authors occasionally came to some truly staggering conclusions, including this gem from Lysias:

Thus, o jurors, did the lawgiver think that rapists were worthy of less punishment than seducers… considering that those who achieve their ends by force are hated by those forced, while the seducers destroy the souls of those seduced, thus making others’ wives more attached to them than to their husbands…
(Orations I.32-33, Lysias, trans. me.)

How do we accurately interpret an ancient perspective that says it’s better for a woman to be raped than seduced? How do we overcome the immediate, visceral disgust at that idea and make scholarly judgments about ancient treatment of women without being affected by emotion?

I’m honestly not sure yet. We can at least be grateful, though, that the problems in rape and consent law today are a far cry from those in the Athenian courts during Lysias’ time, or in Rome before and during the Republic. By no means should we belittle the tangled legal and social issues surrounding rape that still need to be worked out in our own societies, but I can’t help but say we’ve made some progress. Now we just need to make more.