insurrection? Why, that they may shine in gold and purple; that they
may ride through our city in chariots triumphing over abrogated law;
that there may be no bounds to waste and luxury! So soon as the law
shall cease to limit the expenses of the wife, the husband will be
powerless to set bounds to them." As the uttermost measure of the
abasement to which the women had descended, Cato declared with
indignation that they had solicited votes, and he concluded by saying
that though he called upon the gods to prosper whatever action should
be agreed upon, he thought that on no account should the Oppian law be
set aside.

When Cato had finished, one of the plebeian tribunes, Lucius Valerius,
replied to him sarcastically, saying that in spite of the mild
disposition of the speaker who had just concluded, he had uttered some
severe things against the matrons, though he had not argued very
efficiently against the measure they supported. He referred his hearers
to a book of Cato's, [Footnote: Livy is authority for this statement,
but it has been doubted if Cato's book had been written at the time.]
called _Origines_, or "Antiquities," in which it was made clear
that in the old times women had appeared in public, and with good
effect too. "Who rushed into the forum in the days of Romulus, and
stopped the fight with the Sabines?" he asked. "Who went out and turned
back the army of the great Coriolanus? Who brought their gold and
jewels into the forum when the Gauls demanded a great ransom for the
city? Who went out to the sea-shore during the late war to receive the
Idæan mother (Cybele) when new gods were invited hither to relieve our
distresses? Who poured out their riches to supply a depleted treasury
during that same war, now so fresh in memory? Was it not the Roman
matrons? Masters do not disdain to listen to the prayers of their
slaves, and we are asked, forsooth, to shut our ears to the petitions