8.  Although all these considerations had been urged against the motion and in its favour, 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the tribunes who had protested against the measure of their colleagues; nor did they retire until this intervention was withdrawn.  There was then no further doubt but that every one of the tribes would vote for the repeal of the law.  Thus was this law annulled, in the twentieth year after it had been made.  The consul Marcus Porcius, as soon as the Oppian law was abolished, sailed immediately, with twenty-five ships of war, of which five belonged to the allies, to the port of Luna, where he ordered the troops to assemble; and having sent an edict along the sea-coast, to collect ships of every description, at his departure from Luna he left orders that they should follow him to the harbour of Pyrenaeus, as he intended to proceed thence against the enemy with his collective fleet.  They accordingly, after sailing by the Ligurian mountains and the Gallic bay, congregated together on the day appointed.  From thence they went to Rhoda, and forcibly dislodged a garrison of Spaniards that were in that fortress.  From Rhoda they proceeded with a favourable wind to Emporiae, and there landed all the forces, excepting the crews of the ships.

9.  At that time, as at present, Emporiae consisted of two towns, separated by a wall.  One was inhabited by Greeks from Phocaea, whence the Massilians also derive their origin; the other by Spaniards.  The Greek town, being open towards the sea, had but a small extent of wall, not above four hundred paces in circuit; but the Spanish town, being farther back from the sea, had a wall three thousand paces in circumference.  A third kind of inhabitants was added by the deified Caesar settling a Roman colony there, after the final defeat of the sons of Pompey.  At present they are all incorporated in one mass; the Spaniards first, and, at length, the Greeks; having been adopted into the Roman citizenship.  Whoever had, at that period, observed the Greeks exposed on one side to the open sea, and on the other to the Spaniards, a fierce and warlike race, would have wondered by what cause they were preserved.  Deficient in strength, they guarded against danger by regular discipline; of which, among even more powerful people, the best preservative is fear.  That part of the wall which faced the country, they kept strongly fortified, having but one gate, at which some one of the magistrates was continually on guard.  During the night, a third part of the citizens kept watch on the walls, posting their watches, and going their rounds, not merely from the force of custom, or in compliance with the law, but with as much vigilance as if an enemy were at their gates.  They never admitted any Spaniard into the city, nor did they go outside the walls without precaution.  The passage to the sea was open to every one:  but, through the gate, next to the Spanish town, none