is 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 been made; and yet not one woman accepted a pre