Attitudes toward rape changed when the Empire became Christianized. St. Augustine interpreted Lucretia's suicide as a possible admission that she had secretly encouraged the rapist, and Christian apologists regarded her as having committed the sin of involuntary sexual pleasure. The first Christian emperor Constantine redefined rape as a public offense rather than as a private wrong. Earlier Roman law had blurred the line between abduction and elopement, since in either case it was the right of the "paterfamilias" to give or withhold his consent to his daughter's marriage that had been violated. The word "raptus" thus could refer to a successful seduction as well as abduction or rape. If the girl consented, Constantine ordered that she be punished along with the male "abductor" by being burnt alive. If she had not consented, she was still considered an accomplice, "on the grounds that she could have saved herself by screaming for help". As a participant to the rape, she was punished under law by being disinherited, regardless of the wishes of her family. Even if she and her family consented to a marriage as the result of an elopement, the marriage was legally void. In the Republic and the pre-Christian Empire, the consequences of an abduction or an elopement had been up to the couple and their families.