Scholars have often assumed that the "Lex Iulia" was meant to address a virulent outbreak of adultery in the Late Republic. An androcentric perspective in the early 20th century held that the "Lex Iulia" had been "a very necessary check upon the growing independence and recklessness of women." A gynocentric view in the late 20th to early 21st century saw love affairs as a way for the intelligent, independent women of the elite to form emotionally meaningful relationships outside marriages arranged for political purposes. It is possible, however, that no such epidemic of adultery even existed; the law should perhaps be understood not as addressing a real problem that threatened society, but as one of the instruments of social control exercised by Augustus that cast the state, and by extension himself, in the role of "paterfamilias" to all Rome. Humiliating or violent punishments for adultery are prescribed by law and described by poets, but are absent in the works of Roman historians or the letters of Cicero: "The men who people the pages of Cicero and Tacitus do not burst into their wives' bedrooms to take violent revenge (even when license was granted by the law)." Augustus himself, however, had frequent recourse to his moral laws in choosing to banish potential enemies and rivals from Rome, and the effect of the legislation seems to have been primarily political.