Prostitution and Julio-Claudian Legislation: the Formation of Social Policy in Early Imperial Rome (Marriage, Adultery, Economy, Society, Taxation).

This dissertation examines some legal aspects of prostitution in Roman society. The major focus is on the legislation of Augustus and his successors, above all Caligula, that concerns prostitution and its practitioners, as well as subsequent legislation and its treatment by the jurists. The development of this law is explained as an expression of social policy. The first chapter discusses methodology. A definition of prostitution is formulated and a primitive typology of Roman prostitutes and pimps is established. The next two sections describe the business of prostitution and social attitudes towards prostitution. The second chapter concerns the lex Iulia et Papia; it discusses the legal and social status of marriage with prostitutes before Augustus, the terms of the new legislation, and modifications introduced by subsequent emperors. The third chapter is devoted to the lex Iulia de adulteriis coercendis and includes a series of sections dealing with the different statuses and crimes defined by the law, such as the concept of the mater familias, the status of the adultera as prostitute, the crime of lenocinium, the exemption of prostitutes and others, and the status of actual pimps under the law. There follows a discussion of social policy and the LIDA, and a review of subsequent legislative modifications of the law. The first appendix is devoted to the issue of concubinage, prostitution, and the LIDA; the second to analyzing the relationship of the recently discovered senatus consultum from Larinum to this law. The fourth chapter concerns how the classical jurists treated both the LIP and the LIDA. Of particular interest are the definitions of prostitute and pimp given by the jurist Ulpian in the context of the former and the expansion of the rubric of lenocinium under the latter. The fifth chapter deals with the tax on prostitutes introduced by Caligula. The concluding chapter reviews the results obtained in the preceding chapters and attempts to place them in a coherent framework.PhDAncient historyUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/160996/1/8612579.pd