AMID the serious concerns of important wars, either scarcely brought to a close or impending, an incident intervened, trivial indeed to be mentioned, but which, through the zeal of the parties concerned, issued in a violent contest.
Marcus Fundanius and Lucius Valerius, plebeian tribunes, proposed to the people the repealing of the Oppian law.
This law, which had been introduced by Caius Oppias, plebeian tribune, in the consulate of Quintus Fabius and Tiberius Sempronius, during the heat of the Punic war, enacted that “no woman should possess more than half an ounce of gold, or wear a garment of various colours, or ride in a carriage drawn by horses, in a city, or any town, or any place nearer thereto than one mile; except on occasion of some public religious solemnity.”
Marcus and Publius Junius Brutus, plebeian tribunes, supported the Oppian law, and declared, that they would never suffer it to be repealed; while many of the nobility stood forth to argue for and against the motion proposed.
The Capitol was filled with crowds, who favoured or opposed the law; nor could the matrons be kept at home, either by advice or shame, nor even by the commands of their husbands; but beset every street and pass in the city, beseeching the men as they went down to the forum, that in the present flourishing state of the commonwealth, when the private fortune of all was daily in- [p. 1491]
creasing, they would suffer the women to have their former ornaments of dress restored.
This throng of women increased daily, for they arrived even from the country towns and villages; and they had at length the boldness to come up to the consuls, praetors, and magistrates, to urge their request.
One of the consuls, however, they found especially inexorable — Marcus Porcius Cato, who, in support of the law proposed to be repealed, spoke to this effect: —