1 Thessalonians 4:1-8, Holiness in the body

Greek men often married at about thirty, women some twelve years younger, partly because more girls were abandoned at birth, and before marriage men commonly slept with prostitutes, slaves or other males (Keener and his notes; the cultural backgrounds article on prostitution). The article adds that "Gentiles did not punish married men’s affairs with unmarried women", and Roman law punished a man's sex before marriage only when an aristocrat did it with a woman of rank, the offense called stuprum (Keener and his notes). Wright and Bird suggest Paul may have had in mind the sexual side of mystery cults such as Cabirus, and Arnold quotes Livy on the night rites of Dionysus, where wine and the mixing of the sexes led to every kind of corruption. Vessel was a figure for the body and occasionally for a wife; Keener, his notes and the ESV and CSB Study Bibles lean toward the body, and Keener calls the matter not beyond dispute. Adultery was often called wife stealing, and a husband who learned of his wife's adultery had to divorce her or face a charge of pimping (Keener and his notes).