fictitious tale that in a certain island the whole race of males was utterly extirpated by a conspiracy of the women.
But the utmost danger may be apprehended equally from either sex if you suffer cabals and secret consultations to he held: scarcely indeed can I determine, in my own mind, whether the act itself, or the precedent that it affords, is of more pernicious tendency. The latter of these more particularly concerns us consuls and the other magistrates; the former, you, my fellow citizens: for, whether the measure proposed to your consideration be profitable to the State or not is to be determined by you, who are to vote on the occasion.
As to the outrageous behavior of these women, whether it be merely an act of their own, or owing to your instigations, Marcus Fundanius and Lucius Valerius, it unquestionably implies
daily increasing, they would suffer the women to have their former ornaments 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, pretors, and magistrates, to urge their request. One of the consuls, however, they found especially inexorable—Marcus Porcius Cato."
After the discussion was ended, Livy says, "The women next day poured out into public in much greater numbers, and in a body beset the doors of the tribunes who had protested against the measure of their colleags; nor did they return until their intervention was withdrawn." The law was then repealed "in the twentieth year after it was made." In Smith's "Dictionary" we are told how the women evinced their exultation and triumph by "going in procession through the streets and the forum, bedizened with their now legitimate finery."
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