> The morals of the ancient world would probably seem alien to anyone from the > modern era. I can't remember the specifics but Roman literature reflected > ra

> The morals of the ancient world would probably seem alien to anyone from the > modern era. I can't remember the specifics but Roman literature reflected > rather permissive attitudes to non-consensual sexual relations and relations > with minors (eg a marriage age of 12). It's a hard thing to Google for without > ending up on a watch list however. I think that it can be a bit difficult to differentiate pro-forma traditions from what actually occurred. E.g. roman mores were quite different from ours but I'm not sure that marriage at 12 was much aside from an engagement. For exampl with later european marriages might have happened at similar ages but weren't actually consummated until the spouses where in their late teens or older. From a practical standpoint, if you marry someone to cement an alliance, it isn't a good look if you get them pregnant at 12 and they die in childbirth because they are too young to successfully deliver a baby. Even terminology can be misleading as Naomi Wolfe famously found out when writing about homosexuality in Victorian Britain. She wrote about homosexuals being given the death penalty but was embarassed when an interviewer pointed out that one of the men she wrote about was tried and apparently given the death penalty multiple times over several years. Turns out when someone was tried and an entry of "death recorded" was made, it actually meant that their sentence was commuted to jail time or they were pardoned.