is there of their abandoning themselves to luxury on its being repealed?  For, if that law had been passed for the purpose of setting a limit to the passions of the sex, there would be reason to fear lest the repeal of it might operate as an incitement to them.  But the real reason of its being passed, the time itself will show Hannibal was then in Italy, victorious at Cannae:  he already held possession of Tarentum, of Arpi, of Capua, and seemed ready to bring up his army to the city of Rome.  Our allies had deserted us.  We had neither soldiers to fill up the legions, nor seamen to man the fleet, nor money in the treasury.  Slaves, who were to be employed as soldiers, were purchased on condition of their price being paid to the owners at the end of the war.  The farmers of the revenues had declared, that they would contract to supply corn and other matters, which the exigencies of the war required, to be paid for at the same time.  We gave up our slaves to the oar, in numbers proportioned to our properties, and paid them out of our own incomes.  All our gold and silver, in imitation of the example given by the senators, we dedicated to the use of the public.  Widows and minors lodged their money in the treasury.  It was provided by law that we should not keep in our houses more than a certain quantity of wrought gold or silver, or more than a certain sum of coined silver or brass.  At such a time as this, were the matrons so eagerly engaged in luxury and dress, that the Oppian law was requisite to repress such practices; when the senate, because the sacrifice of Ceres had been omitted, in consequence of all the matrons being in mourning, ordered the mourning to end in thirty days?  Who does not clearly see, that the poverty and distress of the state, requiring that every private person’s money should be converted to the use of the public, enacted that law, with intent that it should remain in force so long only as the cause of enacting the law should remain?  For if all the decrees of the senate and orders of the people, which were then made to answer the necessities of the times, are to be of perpetual obligation, why do we refund their money to private persons?  Why do we contract for public works for ready money?  Why are not slaves brought to serve in the army?  Why do not we, private subjects, supply rowers as we did then?

7.  “Shall, then, every other class of people, every individual, feel the improvement in the condition of the state; and shall our wives alone reap none of the fruits of the public peace and tranquillity?  Shall we men have the use of purple, wearing the purple-bordered gown in magistracies and priests’ offices?  Shall our children wear gowns bordered with purple?  Shall we allow the privilege of wearing the toga praetexta to the magistrates of the colonies and borough towns, and to the very lowest of them here at Rome, the superintendents of the streets; and not only of wearing such an ornament of distinction while alive, but of being buried with