ad made it a rule to
maintain the prerogative and authority of a husband with respect to
his own wife, we should have less trouble with the whole sex. But now,
our privileges, overpowered at home by female contumacy, are, even
here in the forum, spurned and trodden under foot; and because we are
unable to withstand each separately, we now dread their collective
body. I was accustomed to think it a fabulous and fictitious tale,
that, in a certain island, the whole race of males was utterly
extirpated by a conspiracy of the women. But the utmost danger may be
apprehended equally from either sex, if you suffer cabals, assemblies,
and secret consultations to be held: scarcely, indeed, can I
determine, in my own mind, whether the act itself, or the precedent
that it affords, is of more pernicious tendency. The latter of these
more particularly concerns us consuls, and the other magistrates:
the former, yourselves, my fellow-citizens. For, whether the measure
proposed to your consideration be profitable to the state or not, is
to be determined by you, who are about to go to the vote. As to the
outrageous behaviour of these women, whether it be merely an act of
their own, or owing to your instigations, Marcus Fundanius and Lucius
Valerius, it unquestionably implies culpable conduct in magistrates. I
know not whether it reflects greater disgrace on you, tribunes, or on
the consuls: on you certainly, if you have, on the present occasion,
brought these women hither for the purpose of raising tribunitian
seditions; on us, if we suffer laws to be imposed on us by a secession
of women, as was done formerly by that of the common people. It was
not without painful emotions of shame, that I, just now, made my way
into the forum through the midst of a band of women. Had I not been
restrained by respect for the modesty and dignity of some individuals
among them, rather than of the whole number, and been unwilling that
they should be seen rebuked by a consul, I should have said to them,
'What sort of practice is this, of running out into public, besetting
the streets, and addressing other women's husbands? Could not
each have made the same request to her husband at home? Are your
blandishments more seducing in public than in private; and with other
women's husbands, than with your own? Although if the modesty of
matrons confined them within the limits of their own rights, it did
not become you, even at home, to concern yourselves about wha