In Latin legal and moral discourse, "stuprum" is illicit sexual intercourse, translatable as "criminal debauchery" or "sex crime". "Stuprum" encompasses diverse sexual offenses including "incestum", rape ("unlawful sex by force"), and adultery. In early Rome, "stuprum" was a disgraceful act in general, or any public disgrace, including but not limited to illicit sex. By the time of the comic playwright Plautus ("ca." 254–184 BC) it had acquired its more restricted sexual meaning. "Stuprum" can occur only among citizens; protection from sexual misconduct was among the legal rights that distinguished the citizen from the non-citizen. Although the noun "stuprum" may be translated into English as fornication, the intransitive verb "to fornicate" (itself derived from the Latin "fornicarium", which originally meant "a vaulted room"; the small vaulted rooms in which some prostitutes plied their trade led to the verb "fornicare") is an inadequate translation of the Latin "stuprare", which is a transitive verb requiring a direct object (the person who is the target of the misconduct) and a male agent (the "stuprator").