By Tonia A. Maniatea
Marital infidelity. A phenomenon as old as time. To be precise, as old as life as a couple, with all its well-known ups and downs: love, desire, passion, care, concern, affection, habit, boredom… «The lover is always the artist in love. The spouse is the bureaucrat.» French playwright Georges Feydeau (Georges Feydeau) in his work at the end of the 19th century, accurately capturing the difference in the prevailing sentiment regarding the «illegality» being committed, but rather in the more romantic version of the story. For at the time the saying was coined, marital infidelity bore the despicable characteristics of adultery, an offense enshrined in the criminal law of nearly all developed or developing countries on the planet.
But let's start from the beginning.
As the term «adultery» conjures images of courtrooms and humiliating apologies for a … marital indiscretion, the much milder term «infidelity» is now preferred. Between the two words, however, there is a fundamental difference, evident even from their etymological analysis. «Infidelity» is nothing more than the absence of faith, whether temporary or permanent. Moreover, the term is used in contexts other than marital or romantic… infidelity. The origin of the term «adultery,» however, is traced to the root «mich-,» from which the verb «miheo» = «ouro» (according to D. Vogiatzis) or «omeichō» with the same meaning (according to D. Dimitrakos and G. Babiniotis). The semantic shift, therefore, from «ouro» to «moichos» – “moicheuo” is interpreted as the result of the stigmatization of extramarital relationships through pejorative expressions!
Literally, then, adultery is a filthy, despicable, and abominable act that directly tarnishes the purity and sanctity of marriage, that sacred mystery to which the Mosaic Law alludes «The two become one flesh». The prohibition against it («You shall not commit adultery») is listed as the seventh commandment in the religious Decalogue.
ADULTERY ON THE HORIZON
Adultery, both as a concept and as a punishable sin, is a matter that dates back more than three thousand years! It appears inscribed—among many other things—on a black diorite stone in the Code of Hammurabi, the great lawgiver, sixth king, and reformer of Babylon (1792–1750 B.C.), and is punishable by death by drowning in a river, both for the adulteress and her lover. However, if the cuckolded husband forgives his wife, then it is at the king’s discretion to forgive her lover. It appears that a similar… concession is also granted to the husband on the part of the cuckolded wife. According to historical researchers, during this period—and in a striking contrast to the evolutionary trajectory of women in the East—women enjoyed absolute equality. In his work «Daily Life in Babylon and Assyria» Georges Contenau, a French archaeologist and professor of religious studies and Middle Eastern cultures at the University of Brussels, reports that in early Sumerian society, women held a much higher status than they did later on, and their prominent position suggests that polyandry was once practiced as well! It appears that the Code of Hammurabi «It grants Babylonian women rights that Western women have only gained in the last century!» as Conteno notes.
Centuries later, in accordance with this specific article (129) of the Code of Hammurabi—which prescribes the death penalty for adultery—the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy also appear (the third and fifth books, respectively, of the Pentateuch and the Old Testament).
Given the moral nature of adultery, historians of family law throughout the centuries have attributed to it—and to the manner in which it is punished—characteristics of religious fervor, or the lack thereof, in societies vulnerable to the threat of divine wrath … Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (even though the latter «blesses» polygamy for men, to «ensure prosperity and equal rights for all women»...), the three widespread monotheistic religions, condemn adultery to the outer flames as a vile catalyst for the founding act of the family (marriage), where the principle of monogamy reigns supreme. After all, faith, mutual support between spouses, and procreation have always been the purposes of marriage—an antidote to carnal desire.
In the West, during the early decades of the Middle Ages, the suppression of adultery was a matter for the state, which intervened through the law to prevent the disruption of social cohesion. From the 11th century onward—as part of the strengthening of ecclesiastical authority and the Gregorian Reform—the Church also gained significant influence on the issue. Its aim is to protect the sacrament of marriage. Since adultery can turn marriage into a torment for one of the spouses and divorce would be a solution, the clergy acted more as advisors than as judges.
The customary law of this period, however, was directed primarily against adulterous women and prescribed humiliating punishments for them, the most common being the shaving of their heads and their public parading naked. In the late Middle Ages, punishments were introduced that openly targeted the body of the «guilty party,» who was thrown to the wolves of an enraged society thirsting for revenge born of shame…
In the 12th century, adultery appears to have been glorified through the literary expression of love in royal courts, reflecting a value system that would endure for several decades, substantially influencing the subsequent status of women. A dominant theme in the poetry of southern France and Italy, as well as in the chivalric romances that appeared around 1160 in Campania, northern France, and Normandy, and which spread throughout Saxon and German Europe, are illicit extramarital affairs, which express absolute love, leading to the lover’s spiritual elevation in the eyes of his partner. Usually, the plot revolves around a man’s efforts to win over a woman—often experienced, always of a higher social class, and always married. Adultery is now the avowed ultimate goal. This love is not platonic. It is a love of soul and body and becomes widely accepted, perhaps «throwing dust in the eyes» of the Church, which attributes it to the imaginative minds of writers and… justifies it, but ultimately, through its own tolerance, ushers in a long period of questioning monogamy within the context of marriage…
As the West becomes more permissive, the East tightens the noose around the necks of adulterers… In the Islamic religious code of conduct (Sharia), the law aims to punish the adulteress in an exemplary manner, primarily by stoning—not merely to death, but through a slow and torturous death.
The laws of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Sudan, Pakistan, and Iran provide for the punishment of adulterers in great detail… «In the case of punishment by stoning to death, the stones must not be too large, lest the guilty person die from just one or two of them. Nor must they be so small that they are not considered stones.» (!) The condemned, in order to serve as a fixed target for those who will stone them, are buried up to their waists—men—and up to their shoulders—women. If, while being stoned, they manage to free themselves, the execution of their sentence is halted—a fact that heightens the crowd’s adrenaline, whose members, moment by moment and in order to leave the offender no time to save his life, intensify the stoning in both frequency and force!
Unfortunately, in Arab societies—and as long as women’s status remains stuck in the depths of hell—women will be at the mercy of the prevailing male «morality» that imposes “punishment” on them, even if the evidence of her sin is insufficient. According to Amnesty International, Iran is a country where the specter of stoning remains—legally—alive and terrifying.
The Iranian penal code containing the provision on stoning has, of course, been revised, but the new Article 225 still leaves room for acts of brutality. A judge may change the method of execution for a person convicted of adultery «if stoning is not possible» by issuing a ruling, which, however, must be approved by the head of the judiciary. There is no official figure for the number of stonings in Iran. However, the relevant committee of Amnesty International has documented approximately 150 cases between 1980 and 2009. The most recent publicized case involved an adulterer in March 2009, who was stoned to death in the city of Rasht in the north of the country.
The point is that the lifelong union of two partners continues to serve as a point of reference in all societies around the world, whether it is an institutional contract imposed by the norms of social culture or a personal choice maintained within a close-knit circle, without the ritual of a religious sacrament. Vows to remain by one another’s side do not necessarily entail a commitment to a god, but primarily to one another. Among indigenous tribes in Africa, where «marriage» is not performed in the name of a god, this commitment takes on the dimension of a sacred oath to one’s fellow human beings and the surrounding community. The irony is that the higher the concept of respect for one’s partner ranks on each tribe’s scale of values—a fact somewhat «softened» in modern societies—the more abhorrent is the way in which its violation is stigmatized.
Punishment for adultery, as included in the unwritten law of the Nigerian Igbo tribe, as described by Geoffrey Abbott in his book «The Executioner's Handbook: Executions from Antiquity to the Present Day», It prescribes a nightmarish method of execution. The elders of the tribe strip the adulterous couple naked, bind their bodies together, force them to have intercourse in public amid the beating of drums and whistles, and then, with the two bodies lying one on top of the other, the tribe’s doctor pierces them with the same long wooden stake and, with the help of the tribe, drags them to a lake where crocodiles live, and throws them in!
Until the early 20th century, African tribes condemned adulterers to cannibalism! After the elders« verdict, they stripped the »sinful« couple naked, tied the man and woman facing each other to stakes driven into the ground one meter apart, and made them drink heavily salted water. After 24 hours, they ask the man if he is hungry, and regardless of his answer, they cut a piece from the woman’s breast and shove it into his mouth, forcing him to chew it! The woman is subjected to the same torture using a piece of her lover’s body. The executioners take turns until the »guilty” ones breathe their last!
In contrast to all of the above, in the theoretically and practically advanced societies of non-Muslim Africans, Polynesians, and Eskimos, the term «adultery» is virtually unknown.
ADULTERY IN ANCIENT GREECE
The punishment for the adulterer and the adulteress is severe (always… with the harsher punishment reserved for women) both in ancient Egypt and in ancient Greece, where the term «adultery» applies not only to married women but also to widows and unmarried women. To be precise, when women are not courtesans, they are not “entitled” to change sexual partners. As ancient writers attest, based on the laws of Draco—which were later replaced by the more lenient laws of Solon— in Athens, adulterers and adulteresses were publicly shamed in the most humiliating manner. They were loaded naked onto a donkey (onovatides), facing the animal’s hindquarters, and paraded through the city, enduring the mockery of the crowd. However, there is an even greater humiliation, as attested to in the works of Aristophanes and Lucian. These are the “tilmos” and the “rafanidosis”—that is, the plucking of pubic hair and being beaten with a radish!
In ancient Greece, adultery committed by a wife gave anyone with rights over her (father, husband, brother) to choose and impose a punishment—up to and including the death penalty—on both the adulteress herself and her lover.
One might say that monogamy, which unites the lives of two people on the basis of a family perspective, apart from the consent of each partner—which is required in any case—constitutes a moral law, the violation of which disrupts the marital harmony and sanctity of the couple. As such a law, as a safeguard of family balance, in Greece as well, since the establishment of the Greek state, adultery has been classified as a misdemeanor in the Penal Code, initially in accordance with an article of Bavarian criminal law that remained in force until December 31, 1950, and subsequently, as part of Article 357 of the new Penal Code, which took effect on January 1, 1951. The prescribed penalty for adulterers was one year of imprisonment, and prosecution was initiated only upon complaint by the aggrieved party. Adultery was deemed not punishable when the spouses were separated.
Then, in 1982, the «Change» government overturned the existing system. On this day 39 years ago, on July 24, 1982, the Greek Parliament passed a bill abolishing criminal prosecution for adultery.
«Article 357 of the Penal Code concerning adultery is repealed. Pending cases involving violations of Article 357 of the Penal Code shall be dismissed by order of the competent prosecutor, and any arrest warrants that have been issued shall be returned unexecuted. Convictions for adultery handed down prior to the effective date of this law, and the sentences imposed pursuant to Article 357 of the Penal Code, shall be expunged from the criminal record, andthe destruction of the relevant records» as stated in the note to Article 6 of Law No. 1271/1982.
Over the centuries, «adultery» has come to be seen as «infidelity,» and society’s view of the phenomenon is refracted through the glass filter of liberation. After all, the delicate balance of two people’s long-term coexistence within the context of marriage demonstrates that fidelity to one’s partner cannot be imposed—especially not by law. It is earned; it is given freely.
Marriage, of course, remains an unchanging constant, but when the… sweet-tongued Furies tempt spouses to infidelity, handle the matter as they see fit and avoid legal disputes, let alone those tragicomic scenes where adulterers are caught… red-handed and dragged to police stations wrapped in the sheets of their sin…
