of so many years to be beneficial, should now be repealed; that is, that, by abolishing one law, you should weaken all the rest.  No law perfectly suits the convenience of every member of the community:  the only consideration is, whether, upon the whole, it be profitable to the greater part.  If because a law proves obnoxious to a private individual, that circumstance should destroy and sweep it away, to what purpose is it for the community to enact general laws, which those, with reference to whom they were passed, could presently repeal?  I should like, however, to hear what this important affair is which has induced the matrons thus to run out into public in this excited manner, scarcely restraining from pushing into the forum and the assembly of the people.  Is it to solicit that their parents, their husbands, children, and brothers may be ransomed from captivity under Hannibal?  By no means:  and far be ever from the commonwealth so unfortunate a situation.  Yet, even when such was the case, you refused this to their prayers.  But it is not duty, nor solicitude for their friends; it is religion that has collected them together.  They are about to receive the Idaean Mother, coming out of Phrygia from Pessinus!  What motive, that even common decency will allow to be mentioned, is pretended for this female insurrection?  Why, say they, that we may shine in gold and purple; that, both on festal and common days, we may ride through the city in our chariots, triumphing over vanquished and abrogated law, after having captured and wrested from you your suffrages; and that there may be no bounds to our expenses and our luxury.

4.  “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 been the ruin of all great empires.  These I dread the more, as the circumstances of the commonwealth grow daily more prosperous and happy; as the empire increases; as we have now 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:  so much the more do I fear that these matters will bring us into captivity, rather than we them.  Believe me, those statues from Syracuse were brought into this city with hostile effect.  I already hear too many commending and admiring the decorations of Athens and Corinth, and ridiculing the earthen images of our Roman gods that stand on the fronts of their temples.  For my part I prefer these gods,—­propitious as they are, and I hope will continue to be, if we allow them to remain in their own mansions.  In the memory of our fathers, Pyrrhus, by his ambassador Cineas, made trial of the dispositions, not only of our men, but of our women also, by offers of presents:  at that time the Oppian law, for restraining female luxury, had not