Punishment for Adultery in Ancient Athens

In ancient Athens, if a jury found you guilty of sleeping with another man’s wife, the man whose wife you slept with had the right to sodomize you with a Daikon radish.

Even if you were used to being sodomized, the radish would still sting pretty badly. The Lakiad district (one of about 140 districts in the city-state) was known as the adultery district because it produced so many radishes.

Being known to be sodomized was a terrible humiliation for a man in ancient Greek culture, and this would basically ruin your life; no one would ever think of you as a man again, and you’d be laughed out of politics, the only career people were actually interested in pursuing.

According to some sources, a mullet could be used in place of a radish. Apparently the cuckold could also just sodomize you himself, using a regular old penis; to be honest, I’m not sure why this wasn’t the standard instead of the radish thing, as it seems much more humiliating, but then again a mindset that came up with this use for a radish is obviously working under some assumptions different from mine.

The Romans had a similar punishment, though they seem to have used a fish with spines on it, so as to do actual damage.

It’s also unclear to me whether the sodomy was public or private, though I assume the former, and whether it happened right there in the court or at some later time. I like the idea of cuckolds bringing radishes with them to court in case they win.