Lex Scantinia - The Law

The Law

As John Boswell has noted, "if there was a law against homosexual relations, no one in Cicero's day knew anything about it." Although the Lex Scantinia is mentioned in several ancient sources, its provisions are unclear. It penalized the debauchery (stuprum) of a youth, but may also have permitted the prosecution of citizens who chose to take the pathic ("passive" or "submissive") role in homosexual relations. Suetonius mentions the law in the context of punishments for those who are "unchaste," which for male citizens often implies pathic behavior; Ausonius has an epigram in which a semivir, "half-man," fears the Lex Scantinia.

It has sometimes been argued that the Lex Scantinia was mainly concerned with the rape of freeborn youth, but the narrowness of this interpretation has been doubted. The law may have codified traditional sanctions against stuprum involving men, as a forerunner to the Lex Julia de adulteriis coercendis that criminalized adultery involving women. The early Christian poet Prudentius makes a scathing joke that if Jupiter had been subject to Roman law, he could have been convicted under both the Julian and the Scantinian laws.

Only youths from freeborn families in good standing were protected under the law; children born or sold into slavery, or those who fell into slavery through military conquest, were subject to prostitution or sexual use by their masters. Male prostitutes and entertainers, even if technically "free," were considered infames, of no social standing, and were also excluded from the protections afforded the citizen's body. Although male slaves were sometimes granted freedom in recognition of a favored sexual relationship with their master, in some cases of genuine affection they may have remained legally slaves, since under the Lex Scantinia the couple could have been prosecuted if both were free citizens.