Adultery. Even though prostitutes and sexual partners other than their wives were available to Athenian men, adultery was not uncommon. The Greek word for adulterer was moikhos. From the Homeric poems onward, this type of person is characterized as deceptive, dangerous, and even effeminate. The Trojan prince Paris, for example, is the original adulterer in Greek myth, because he abducted the beautiful Helen from her husband's house and brought her to Troy, thereby initiating the Trojan War. In the Iliad (circa eighth-seventh centuries B.C.E.), his brother Hector scolds him for his reckless actions: "Evil Paris, beautiful, woman crazy, cajoling, better had you never been born, or killed unwedded." Paris would rather spend his time in the boudoir with the beautiful Helen than on the battlefield.

Preventive Measures. Because Pericles' law of 450-451 B.C.E. decreed that only the...