
See also: Cato the Censor Biography
  The World’s Famous Orations.
In Support of the Oppian Law
Cato the Censor (234–149 B.C.)
(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.
  But the utmost danger may be apprehended equally from either sex if you suffer cabals and secret consultations to be 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 the 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.  2
  Had I not been restrained by the respect for the modesty and dignity of some individuals among them, rather than of the whole number, and been unwilling that they should be seen rebuked by a consul, I should not have refrained from saying to them, “What sort of practise is this, of running out into public, besetting the streets, and addressing other women’s husbands? Could not each have made the same request to her husband at home? Are your blandishments more seducing in public than in private, and with other women’s husbands than with your own? Altho if females would let their modesty confine them within the limits of their own rights, it did not become you, even at home, to concern yourselves about any laws that might be passed or repealed here.” Our ancestors thought it not proper that women should perform any, even private business, without a director; but that they should be ever under the control of parents, brothers, or husbands. We, it seems, suffer them, now, to interfere in the management of State affairs, and to thrust themselves into the forum, into general assemblies, and into assemblies of election: for what are they doing at this moment in your streets and lanes? What, but arguing, some in support of the motion of tribunes; others contending for the repeal of the law?  4
  By no means: and far be ever from the commonwealth so unfortunate a situation. Yet, when such was the case, you refused this to the prayers which, on that occasion, their duty dictated. But it is not duty, nor solicitude for their friends; it is religion that has collected them together. They are about to receive the Idæan Mother, coming out of Phrygia from Pessinus.  8
  Often have you heard me complain of the profuse expenses of the women—often of those of the men; and that not only of men in private stations, but of the magistrates; and that the state was endangered by two opposite vices, luxury and avarice—those pests which have ever been the ruin of every state. These I dread the more, as the circumstances of the commonwealth grow daily more prosperous and happy; as the empire increases; as we have passed over into Greece and Asia, places abounding with every kind of temptation that can inflame the passions; and as we have begun to handle even royal treasures: for I greatly fear that these matters will rather bring us into captivity than we them.  11
  As diseases must necessarily be known before their remedies, so passions come into being before the laws which prescribe limits to them. What called forth the Licinian Law, restricting estates to five hundred acres, but the unbounded desire for enlarging estates? What the Cineian Law, concerning gifts and presents, but that the plebeians had become vassals and tributaries to the senate? It is not, therefore, in any degree surprising that no want of the Oppian Law, or of any other, to limit the expenses of the women, was felt at that time, when they refused to receive gold and purple that was thrown in their way and offered to their acceptance. If Cineas were now to go round the city with his presents, he would find numbers of women standing in the public streets ready to receive them.  14
Note 1. 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 filled 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 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 collages; 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.” [back]

