inchastity

— In pre-Christian Roman belief it might be held as better not to indulge in extramarital sex, as a courtesy more than a due to one’s partner, or because character was believed to derive from having the strength to resist vice […] but, such rationalisations aside, male inchastity did not matter as such. Female inchastity could threaten bloodlines and property transfer, and so from the earliest times very much did matter: […] in fact, Chrysostom refutes in detail the legal position that only women’s inchastity signified in marriage, in a passage so full of reproach and repetition […] that we may infer that he too is meeting a dead weight of inertia, if not active opposition, from his hearers.