nly solicit favours from other women's husbands; and, what is more,
solicit a law and votes. From some they obtain them; although, with
regard to yourself, your property, or your children, they would be
inexorable. So soon as the law shall cease to limit the expenses of
your wife, you yourself will never be able to do so. Do not suppose
that the matter will hereafter be in the same state in which it was
before the law was made on the subject. It is safer that a wicked man
should even never be accused, than that he should be acquitted; and
luxury, if it had never been meddled with, would be more tolerable
than it will be, now, like a wild beast, irritated by having been
chained, and then let loose. My opinion is, that the Oppian law ought,
on no account, to be repealed. Whatever determination you may come to,
I pray all the gods to prosper it."

[Footnote 1: Previous to the passing of the Cincian law, about ten
years before this time, the advocates who pleaded in the courts
received fees and presents: and as all or most of these were senators,
the plebeians are here represented as tributary to the senate. By the
above law they were forbidden to receive either fees or presents.]

5. After him the plebeian tribunes, who had declared their intention
of protesting, added a few words to the same purport. Then Lucius
Valerius spoke thus in support of the measure which he himself had
introduced:--"If private persons only had stood forth to argue for and
against the proposition which we have submitted to your consideration,
I for my part, thinking enough to have been said on both sides, would
have waited in silence for your determination. But since a person of
most respectable judgment, the consul, Marcus Porcius, has reprobated
our motion, not only by the influence of his opinion, which, had he
said nothing, would carry very great weight, but also in a long and
careful discourse, it becomes necessary to say a few words in answer.
He has spent more words in rebuking the matrons, than in arguing
against the measure proposed; and even went so far as to mention a
doubt, whether the matrons had committed the conduct which he censured
in them spontaneously or at our instigation. I shall defend the
measure, not ourselves: for the consul threw out those insinuations
against us, rather for argument's sake than as a serious charge.
He has made use of the terms cabal and sedition; and, sometimes,
secession of the women: because the matro