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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   16217 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025

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It's true, people rarely live up to their principles, and powerful men are no exception. But people still understood that as a failure.

Sexual impropriety among the Romans caused them real concrete problems that those reforms tried to ameliorate. The idea that those were just the hangups of losers that don't merit consideration is silly.

The idea that those were just the hangups of losers that don't merit consideration is silly.

I want to register my agreement with your general point. But:

It's true, people rarely live up to their principles, and powerful men are no exception. But people still understood that as a failure.

My point isn't that Augustus and co didn't live up to his principles, it is that their sexual principles were largely alien to ours and probably in relevant ways that make the law's impact different than simplistically comparing it to the modern day. The laws probably didn't really apply to poor people, and mostly didn't apply to non-citizens, and definitely didn't apply to slaves. Citizens were somewhere between a quarter and a third of the population at the time, depending on what estimate you prefer. Then you get into the commonplace homosexual behavior.

So the ban on adultery was, in function, more like a Bro-Code deal than a moral statement. In impact, it's roughly like a law in modern America which prescribes punishments to College Graduates if they steal the wife of another College Graduate.

their sexual principles were largely alien to ours and probably in relevant ways that make the law's impact different than simplistically comparing it to the modern day

I think this is true in a specific sense but untrue in a general sense. People had vastly different conceptions of morality and sexuality, certainly, but they were still human beings so their concerns were ultimately the same: securing material commitment, certainty of paternity, etc.

In impact, it's roughly like a law in modern America which prescribes punishments to College Graduates if they steal the wife of another College Graduate.

And that's still a significant and willful regulation of the sexual marketplace. Those real Alpha jocks are not up for a free for all where the best man can just fuck everybody's wife, actually. Because they want their kids to be theirs.

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