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In ancient Greece and Rome, women were never considered legal adults, but were under a man's authority throughout their lives. Her father was typically a girl's guardian, and, with some exceptions, after marriage a woman's husband held this authority. This legal restriction often meant that women could not engage in business on their own, initiate lawsuits or answer to one in court, or make their own marital arrangements or other decisions about their lives. Ancient Athens, often promoted as the fount of Western ideals of democracy, was also the most restrictive in its subjection of women to male authority, known as kyria. Legislation of the first Roman emperor Augustus exempted elite women who had borne three sons and freedwomen who had borne four sons from certain taxes and from the restrictions of male guardianship.
Ancient laws of adultery targeted women and dealt harshly with female adultery. Each society told moralistic tales of the disasters incurred by the actions of wanton, adulterous wives. Marriage laws aimed to insure the husband's biological line, which could only be guaranteed by the wife's strict sexual marital fidelity. A wife's adultery was typically cause for immediate divorce, even if the man did not wish it. A woman had to forfeit any dowry or other material goods she brought to the marriage, items which she or her family received back in the much rarer cases of the husband's fault for divorce. In some societies, the penalties for a woman's adultery could mean her ostracism from the community, enslavement, or even death, penalties which the man also incurred in some circumstances.
