In the law which assigns the punishment of death to adultery (Lev. xx. so), the mode in which that punishment should be inflicted is not specified, because it was known from custom. It was not, however, stnzngulation, as the Talmudists contend, but stoning., as we may learn from various passages of Scripture (e. g. Ezek. xvi. 38, 40; John viii. 5); and as, in fact, Moses himself testifies, if we com pare Exod. xxxi. 14; xxxv. 2; with Num. xv. 35, 36. If the adulteress was a bondmaid, the guilty parties were both scourged with a leathern whip (rpn), the number of blows not exceeding forty. In this instance the adulterer, in addition to the scourging, was subject to the further penalty of bringing a trespass offering (a ram) to the door of the tabernacle, to be offered in his behalf by the priest (Lev. xix. 20-22). Those who wish to enter into the reasons of this distinction in favour of the bondmaid, may consult Michaelis (1lrosaisehes Recht. art. 264). We only observe that the Moslem law, derived from the old Arabian usage, only inflicts upon a slave, for this and other crimes, half the punishment incurred by a free person.
It seems that the Roman law made the same important distinction with the Hebrew, between the infidelity of the husband and of the wife. ' Adultery' was defined by the civilians to be the violation of another man's bed (violatio tori alieni); so that the infidelity of the husband could not constitute the offence. The more ancient laws of Rome, which were very severe against the offence of the wife, were silent as to that of the husband. The offence was not capital until made so by Constantine, in imitation of the Jewish law; but under Leo and Marcian the penalty was abated to perpetual imprisonment, or cutting off the nose; and, under Justinian, the further mitigation was granted to the woman, that she was only to be scourged, to lose her dower, and to be shut up in a convent.
The punishment of cutting off the nose brings to mind the passage in which the prophet Ezekiel (xxiii. 25), after, in the name of the Lord, reprov ing Israel and Judah for their adulteries (i. e. idolatries) with the Assyrians and Chaldeans, threatens the punishment—' they shall take away thy nose and thy ears,' which Jerome states was actually the punishment of adultery in those nations. One or both of these mutilations, most generally that of the nose, were also inflicted by other nations, as the Persians and Egyptians, and even the Romans ; but we suspect that among the former, as with the latter, it was less a judicial punishment than a summary infliction by the aggrieved party. It is more than once alluded to as such by the Roman poets ; thus Martial asks, Quis tibi persuasit nares abscindere macho?' and in Virgil (/En. vi. 496) we read ' Ora, manusque ambas, populataque tempora raptis Auribus, et truncas inhonesto vulnere nares.
It would also seem that these mutilations were more usually inflicted on the male than the female adulterer. In Egypt, however, cutting off the nose was the female punishment, and the man was beaten terribly with rods (Diod. Sic. i. 89, 90). The respect with which the conjugal union was treated in that country in the earliest times is mani fested in the history of Abraham (Gen. xii. 19).