nd restores liberty to Argos. Separate seats at the public
games, for the first time, appointed for the senator. Colonies
sent forth. Marcus Porcius Cato triumphs on account of his
successes in Spain. Further successes in Spain against the
Boians and Insubrian Gauls. Titus Quinctius Flamininus,
having subdued Philip, king of Macedonia, and Nabis, the
Lacedaemonian tyrant, and restored all Greece to freedom,
triumphs for three days. Carthaginian ambassadors bring
intelligence of the hostile designs of Antiochus and
Hannibal._

1. Amid the serious concerns of important wars, either scarcely
brought to a close or impending, an incident intervened, trivial
indeed to be mentioned, but which, through the zeal of the parties
concerned, issued in a violent contest. Marcus Fundanius and Lucius
Valerius, plebeian tribunes, proposed to the people the repealing of
the Oppian law. This law, which had been introduced by Caius Oppias,
plebeian tribune, in the consulate of Quintus Fabius and Tiberius
Sempronius, during the heat of the Punic war, enacted that "no woman
should possess more than half an ounce of gold, or wear a garment of
various colours, or ride in a carriage drawn by horses, in a city,
or any town, or any place nearer thereto than one mile; except on
occasion of some public religious solemnity." Marcus and Publius
Junius Brutus, plebeian tribunes, supported the Oppian law, and
declared, that they would never suffer it to be repealed; while
many of the nobility stood forth to argue for and against the motion
proposed. The Capitol was filled with crowds, who favoured or opposed
the law; nor could the matrons be kept at home, either by advice or
shame, nor even by the commands of their husbands; but beset every
street and pass in the city, beseeching the men as they went down to
the forum, that in the present flourishing state of the commonwealth,
when the private fortune of all was daily increasing they would suffer
the women to have their former ornaments of dress restored. This
throng of women increased daily, for they arrived even from the
country towns and villages; and they had at length the boldness to
come up to the consuls, praetors, and magistrates, to urge their
request. One of the consuls, however, they found especially
inexorable--Marcus Porcius Cato, who, in support of the law proposed
to be repealed, spoke to this effect:--

2. "If, Romans, every individual among us h