Q about Roman court decree c. 3rd century

Factual Questions
1

I’m finishing off Grant’s Augustus to Constantine. He says:

On the other hand, an ascetic view was encouraged by conflict with licentious Gnostics, by opposition to popular slanders about Christian promiscuity, and by the penalty of stupratio sometimes imposed upon Christian women by Roman judges.

for which he references one F. Augar in Texte und Untersuchungen (Gebhardt & Harnack, eds)

So … what’s stupratio?

2

I found this likely related definition:
http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/dictionaries/difficultwords/data/d0012273.html

Stupration = rape

3

My copy of Black’s Law Dictionary doesn’t have the word, but it does define “stuprum” as a latin word meaning a man’s illegal sexual contact with a woman who is not herself married. (Which would be adultery.) Can anyone with a knowledge of Latin conjugation tell us if it’s related?

–Cliffy

4

Well, at least some answers; thanks, guys.

Last call for Roman law experts.

Haaalllp! Please?

5

In Roman law, at least as it applied to Roman citizens, virgin girls couldn’t be executed…it was seen as sacriligious, because virginity was sacred to the goddesses Diana and Vestia, so, especially during the period we’re talking about, virgin women who had committed a capital crime would be sentenced to be raped before they were sentenced to death. That way, the state would no longer be executing a virgin.

The most infamous case of this happening is the case of Sejanus, who was the emperor Tiberius’s right hand man until he fell out of favor, arrested and sentenced to death along with his wife and children. He had a 9 year old daughter. I’ll let you finish the story.