IN SUPPORT OF THE OPPIAN LAW[1]
(215 B.C.)
Born in 234 B.C., died in 149; consul in 195; censor in 184; sent to Carthage in 150. Of Cato’s orations, numbering at least 150, only fragments have been preserved.
If, Romans, every individual among us had made it a rule to maintain the prerogative and authority of a husband with respect to his own wife, we should have less trouble with the whole sex. But now our privileges, overpowered at home by female contumacy, are, even here in the Forum, spurned and trodden under foot; and because we are unable to withstand each separately we now dread their collective body. I was accustomed to think it a fabulous and
- ↑ Delivered in the Roman forum in 215 B.C. Reported by Livy. Spillan and Edmonds translation.
The Oppian Law which had been enacted "during the heat of the Punic War," declared that "no woman should possess more than half an ounce of gold, or wear a garment of various colors, or ride in a carriage drawn by horses in a city, or in a town, or any place nearer thereto than one mile, except on occasions of some public religious solemnity." Livy describes the scene in Rome on the day of Cato's speech: "The Capitol was tilled with crowds who favored 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 they 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
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