Lex Scantinia

The Lex Scantinia (less often Scatinia) is a poorly documented[1] Roman law that penalized stuprum (criminalized sexual behavior or "sex crime") against a freeborn male minor (ingenuus or praetextatus).

The primary use of the Lex Scantinia seems to have been harassing political opponents whose lifestyles opened them to criticism as being passive homosexuals or pederasts in the Hellenistic manner.

The conflation of the Lex Scantinia with later or other restrictions on sexual behaviors has sometimes led to erroneous assertions that the Romans had strict laws and penalties against homosexuality in general.

[15] Suetonius mentions the law in the context of punishments for those who are "unchaste," which for male citizens often implies pathic behavior;[16] Ausonius has an epigram in which a semivir, "half-man," fears the Lex Scantinia.

[24] Two letters written to Cicero by Caelius[25] indicate that the law was used as a "political weapon";[26] ancient Rome had no public prosecutors, and charges could be filed and prosecuted by any citizen with the legal expertise to do so.

[29] Appius's term as censor was a moral "reign of terror" that stripped multiple senators and equestrians of their rank;[30] sometime during the fall of that year he indicted[31] Caelius, a sitting curule aedile, under the Lex Scantinia.

The crackdown on public morals included sexual offenses such as adultery and illicit sex (incestum) with a Vestal, and several men from both the senatorial and equestrian order were condemned under the Lex Scantinia.

In 227 or 226 BC, Gaius Scantinius Capitolinus was put on trial for sexually molesting the son of Marcus Claudius Marcellus; a certain irony would attend the Lex Scantinia if in fact he had been its proposer.