an unlawful commerce between one married person and another, or between a married and unmarried person.

Punishments have been annexed to adultery in most ages and nations, though of different degrees of severity. In many it has been capital; in others venial, and attended only with slight pecuniary mulcts. Some of the penalties are serious, and even cruel; others of a jocose and humorous kind. Even contrary things have been enacted as punishments for adultery. By some laws, the criminals are forbidden marrying together, in case they became single; by others, they are forbidden to marry any besides each other; by some, they are incapacitated from ever committing the like crime again; by others, they are glutted with it till it becomes downright nauseous.

Among the rich Greeks, adulterers were allowed to redeem themselves by a pecuniary fine; the woman's father, in such cases, returned the dower he had received from her husband, which some think was refunded by the adulterer. Another punishment among those people was, putting out the eyes of adulterers.

The Athenians had an extraordinary way of punishing adulterers, called ἀποκατάστασις ἀποκατάστασις, practised at least on the poorer sort who were not able to pay the fines. This was an awkward sort of emplacement, performed by thrusting one of the largest radishes up the anus of the adulterer, or, in defect thereof, a fish with a large head, called magil, mullet. Alcæus is said to have died this way, though it was doubted whether the punishment was reputed mortal. Juvenal and Catullus speak of this custom, as received also among the Romans, though not authorized by an express law, as it was among the Greeks.

There are various conjectures concerning the ancient punishment of Adultery among the Romans. Some will have it to have been made capital by a law of Romulus, and again by the twelve tables. Others, that it was first made capital by Augustus; and others, not before the emperor Constantine. The truth is, the punishment in the early days was very various, much being left to the discretion of the husband and parents of the adulterous wife, who exercised it differently, rather with the silence and countenance of the magistrate, than any formal authority from him. Thus we are told, the wife's father was allowed to kill both parties, when caught in the fact, provided he did it immediately, killed both together, and as it were with one blow. The same power ordinarily was not indulged the husband, except the crime were committed with some mean or infamous person; tho', in other cases, if his rage carried him to put them to death, he was not punished as a murderer. On many occasions, however, revenge was not carried so far; but mutilating, castrating, cutting off the ears, noses, &c. served the turn. The punishment allotted by the lex Julia, was not, as many have imagined, death; but rather banishment, or deportation, being interdicted fire and water: though Octavius appears, in several instances, to have gone beyond his own law, and to have put adulterers to death. Under Macrinus, many were burnt at a stake. Constantine first by law made the crime capital. Under Constantius and Constans, adulterers were burnt, or sewed in sacks and thrown into the sea. Under Leo and Marcellian, the penalty was abated to perpetual banishment, or cutting off the nose. Under Justinian, a further mitigation was granted; at least in favour of the wife, who was only to be scourged, lose her dower, and be shut up in a monastery: after two years, the husband was at liberty to take her back again; if he refused, she was flayed, ven, and made a nun for life: But it still remained death in the husband. The reason alleged for this difference is, that the woman is the weaker vessel. Matthew declaims against the empress Theodora, who is supposed to have been the cause of this law, as well as of others procured in favour of the sex from that emperor.

Under Theodosius, women convicted of this crime were punished after a very singular manner, viz. by a public confutation; being locked up in a narrow cell, and forced to admit to their embraces all the men that would offer themselves. To this end, the gallants were to dress themselves on purpose, having several little bells fastened to their clothes, the tinkling of which gave notice to those without of every motion. This custom was again abolished by the same prince.

In Britain, adultery is reckoned a spiritual offence, that is, cognizable by the spiritual courts. The common law takes no farther notice of it, than to allow the party grieved an action and damages. This practice is often censured by foreigners, as making too light of a crime, the bad consequences of which, public as well as private, are so great. But perhaps this penalty, by civil action, is more wisely calculated to prevent the frequency of the offence, which ought to be the end of all laws, than a severer punishment. He that by a judgment of law is, according to circumstances, stripped of great part of his fortune, thrown into prison till he can pay it, or forced to fly his country, will, no doubt, in most cases, own, that he pays dearly for his amusement.