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Foreword: There are a lot of truths in this story of women's rebellion in Ancient Rome, and it is from here that we get the following famous quote by Cato the Censor:
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"If you allow them to pull
away these restraints and wrench them out one after another, and finally
put themselves on an equality with their husbands, do you imagine that
you will be able to tolerate them? From the moment that they become your
fellows they will become your masters."
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The most remarkable thing I personally find about this story is the striking similarities of the Ancient Roman Women's reaction to suggestions that they ought to moderate their dress for the betterment of society, and the Slut Walkers that exist in our modern day culture.
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"At Rome, besides the general institutions, the censors prevailed on
the magistrates to enact several particular laws for maintaining the
frugality of women. This was the design of the Fannian, Licinian, and
Oppian laws. We may see in Livy the great ferment the senate was in when
the women insisted upon the revocation of the Oppian law. The
abrogation of this law is fixed upon by Valerius Maximus as the period
whence we may date the luxury of the Romans." --
Baron de Montesquieu
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Book 34: Close of the Macedonian War 34.1


While
the State was preoccupied by serious wars, some hardly yet over and
others threatening, an incident occurred which though unimportant in
itself resulted in a violent party conflict. Two of the tribunes of the
plebs, M. Fundanius and L. Valerius, had brought in a proposal to repeal
the Oppian Law. This law had been made on the motion of M. Oppius, a
tribune of the plebs, during the consulship of Q. Fabius and Tiberius
Sempronius, when the strain of the Punic War was most severely felt. It
forbade any woman to have in her possession more than half an ounce of
gold, to wear a dress of various colours or to ride in a two-horsed
vehicle within a mile of the City or of any Roman town unless she was
going to take part in some religious function. The two Brutuses-M.
Junius and T. Junius-both tribunes of the plebs, defended the law and
declared that they would not allow it to be repealed; many of the
nobility came forward to speak in favour of the repeal or against it;
the Capitol was crowded with supporters and opponents of the proposal;
the matrons could not be kept indoors either by the authority of the
magistrates or the orders of their husbands or their own sense of
propriety. They filled all the streets and blocked the approaches to the
Forum; they implored the men who were on their way thither to allow the
women to resume their former adornments now that the commonwealth was
flourishing and private fortunes increasing every day. Their numbers
were daily augmented by those who came up from the country towns. At
last they ventured to approach the consuls and praetors and other
magistrates with their demands. One of the consuls at all events was
inexorably opposed to their request-M. Porcius Cato. He spoke as follows
in defence of the law: 34.2
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"If we had, each one of us, made it a rule to uphold the rights and authority of the husband in our own households we should not now have this trouble with the whole body of our women. As things are now our liberty of action, which has been
checked and rendered powerless by female despotism at home, is actually
crushed and trampled on here in the Forum, and because we were unable to
withstand them individually we have now to dread their united strength.
I used to think that it was a fabulous story which tells us that
in a certain island the whole of the male sex was extirpated by a conspiracy amongst the women; there is no class of women from whom the gravest
dangers may not arise, if once you allow intrigues, plots, secret cabals
to go on. I can hardly make up my mind which is worse, the affair
itself or the disastrous precedent set up. The latter concerns us as
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consuls and magistrates; the former has to do more with you, Quirites.
Whether the measure before you is for the good of the commonwealth or
not is for you to determine by your votes; this tumult amongst the
women, whether a spontaneous movement or due to your instigation, M.
Fundanius and L. Valerius, certainly points to failure on the part of
the magistrates, but whether it reflects more on you tribunes or on the
consuls I do not know. It brings the greater discredit on you if you
have carried your tribunitian agitation so far as to create unrest among
the women, but more disgrace upon us if we have to submit to laws being
imposed upon us through fear of a secession on their part, as we had to
do formerly on occasions of the secession of the plebs. It was not
without

a feeling of shame that I made my way into the Forum through a
regular army of women. Had not my respect for the dignity and modesty of
some amongst them, more than any consideration for them as a whole,
restrained me from letting them be publicly rebuked by a consul, I
should have said, '
What is this habit you have formed of running abroad
and blocking the streets and accosting men who are strangers to you?
Could you not each of you put the very same question to your husbands at
home? Surely you do not make yourselves more attractive in public than
in private, to other women's husbands more than to your own? If matrons
were kept by their natural modesty within the limits of their rights, it
would be most unbecoming for you to trouble yourselves even at home
about the laws which may be passed or repealed here.' Our ancestors
would have no woman transact even private business except through her
guardian, they placed them under the tutelage of parents or brothers or
husbands. We suffer them now to dabble in politics and mix themselves up
with the business of the Forum and
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public debates and election
contests. What are they doing now in the public roads and at the street
corners but recommending to the plebs the proposal of their tribunes and
voting for the repeal of the law. Give the reins to a headstrong
nature, to a creature that has not been tamed, and then hope that they
will themselves set bounds to their licence if you do not do it
yourselves. This is the smallest of those restrictions which have been
imposed upon women by ancestral custom or by laws, and which they submit
to with such impatience. What they really want is unrestricted freedom,
or to speak the truth, licence, and if they win on this occasion what
is there that they will not attempt? 34.3
"Call to mind all the
regulations respecting women by which our ancestors curbed their licence
and made them obedient to their husbands, and yet in spite of all those
restrictions you can scarcely hold them in. If you allow them to pull
away these restraints and wrench them out one after another, and finally
put themselves on an equality with their husbands, do you imagine that
you will be able to tolerate them? From the moment that they become your
fellows they will become your masters. But surely, you say, what they
object to is having a new restriction imposed upon them, they are not
deprecating the assertion of a right but the infliction of a wrong. No,
they are demanding the
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abrogation of a law which you enacted by your
suffrages and which the practical experience of all these years has
approved and justified. This they would have you repeal; that means that
by rescinding this they would have you weaken all.
No law is equally agreeable to everybody, the only question is whether it is beneficial on the whole and good for the majority. If everyone who feels himself personally aggrieved by a law is to destroy it and get rid of it, what is gained by the whole body of citizens making laws which those against whom they are enacted can in a short time repeal? I want, however, to
learn the reason why these excited matrons have run out into the streets
and scarcely keep away from the Forum and the Assembly. Is it that
those taken prisoners by Hannibal-their fathers and husbands and
children and brothers-may be ransomed? The republic is a long way from
this misfortune, and may it ever remain so! Still, when this did happen,
you refused to do so in spite of their dutiful entreaties. But, you may
say, it is not dutiful affection and solicitude for those they love
that has brought them together; they are going to welcome Mater Idaea on
her way from Phrygian Pessinus. What pretext in the least degree
respectable is put forward for this female insurrection? 'That we may
shine,' they say, 'in gold and purple, that we may ride in carriages on
festal and ordinary days alike, as though in triumph for having defeated
and repealed a law after capturing and forcing from you your votes.'
34.4
"You have often heard me complain of the expensive habits of
women and often, too, of those of men, not only private citizens but
even magistrates, and I have often said that the community suffers from
two opposite vices-avarice and luxury-pestilential diseases which have
proved the ruin of all great empires. The brighter and better the
fortunes of the republic become day by day, and the greater the growth
of its dominion-and now we are penetrating into Greece and Asia, regions
filled with everything that can tempt appetite or excite desire, and
are even laying hands on the treasures of kings-so much the more do I
dread the prospect of these things taking us captive rather than we
them. It was a bad day for this City, believe me, when the statues were
brought from Syracuse. I hear far too many people praising and admiring
those which adorn Athens and Corinth and laughing at the clay images of
our gods standing in front of their temples. I for my part prefer these
gods who are propitious to us, and I trust that they will continue to be
so as long as we allow them to remain in their present abodes.
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In
the days of our forefathers Pyrrhus attempted, through his ambassador
Cineas, to tamper with the loyalty of women as well as men by means of
bribes. The Law of Oppius in restraint of female extravagance had not
then been passed, still not a single woman accepted a bribe. What do you
think was the reason? The same reason which our forefathers had for not
making any law on the subject; there was no extravagance to be
restrained. Diseases must be recognised before remedies are applied, and
so the passion for self-indulgence must be in existence before the laws
which are to curb it. What called out the Licinian Law which restricted
estates to 500 jugera except the keen desire of adding field to field?
What led to the passing of the Cincian Law concerning presents and fees
except the condition of the plebeians who had become tributaries and
taxpayers to the senate? It is not therefore in the least surprising
that neither the Oppian nor any other law was in those days required to
set limits to the expensive habits of women when they refused to accept
the gold and purple that was freely offered to them. If Cineas were to
go in these days about the City with his gifts, he would find women
standing in the streets quite ready to accept them.

There are
some desires of which I cannot penetrate either the motive or the
reason. That what is permitted to another should be forbidden to you may
naturally create a feeling of shame or indignation, but when all are
upon the same level as far as dress is concerned why should any one of
you fear that you will not attract notice ? The very last things to be
ashamed of are thriftiness and poverty, but this law relieves you of
both since you do not possess what it forbids you to possess. The
wealthy woman says, 'This levelling down is just what I do not tolerate.
Why am I not to be admired and looked at for my gold and purple? Why is
the poverty of others disguised under this appearance of law so that
they may be thought to have possessed, had the law allowed it, what it
was quite out of their power to possess?'

Do you want, Quirites,
to plunge your wives into a rivalry of this nature, where the rich
desire to have what no one else can afford, and the poor, that they may
not be despised for their poverty, stretch their expenses beyond their
means? Depend upon it,
as soon as a woman begins to be ashamed of what
she ought not to be ashamed of she will cease to feel shame at what she
ought to be ashamed of. She who is in a position to do so will get what
she wants with her own money, she who cannot do this will ask her
husband. The husband is in a pitiable plight whether he yields or
refuses; in the latter case he will see another giving what he refused
to give. Now they are soliciting other women's husbands, and what is
worse they are soliciting votes for the repeal of a law, and are getting
them from some, against the interest of you and your property and your
children. When once the law has ceased to fix a limit to your wife's
expenses, you will never fix one. Do not imagine that things will be the
same as they were before the law was made. It is safer for an evil-doer
not to be prosecuted than for him to be tried and then acquitted, and
luxury and extravagance would have been more tolerable had they never
been interfered with than they will be now, just like wild beasts which
have been irritated by their chains and then released. I give my vote
against every attempt to repeal the law, and pray that all the gods may
give your action a fortunate result." 34.5

After this the
tribunes of the plebs who had announced their intention of vetoing the
repeal spoke briefly to the same effect. Then L. Valerius made the
following speech in defence of his proposal: .....
34.8
After
these speeches in support of and against the law the women poured out
into the streets the next day in much greater force and went in a body
to the house of the two Brutuses, who were vetoing their colleagues'
proposal, and beset all the doors, nor would they desist till the
tribunes had abandoned their opposition. There was no doubt now that the
tribes would be unanimous in rescinding the law. It was abrogated
twenty years after it had been made....
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Related:
The Spirit of Laws – Baron de Montesquieu
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Why parade and ridicule potential or live rapists by trying to shame them..
ReplyDeleteTotal madness, my wife isn't a target as she covers herror tits and ass and also doesn't shave her body anymore, so puts off criminal gatherers onot beach with hairs you could make a jumper out of poking from her tiny yellow bikini and legs like mine with not forget the armpits and top lip