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A Strike by the Women of Rome
From: Livy's History of Rome: Book 34
"Close of the Macedonian War"
Note: these brief excerpts are from Livius,
Titus. The History of Rome, v. 5. Feel free to browse
the larger text.
34.1
While the State was preoccupied by serious wars, some hardly yet over and
others threatening, an incident occurred which though unimportant in itself
resulted in a violent party conflict. Two of the tribunes of the plebs,
M. Fundanius and L. Valerius, had brought in a proposal to repeal the Oppian
Law. This law had been made on the motion of M. Oppius, a tribune of the
plebs, during the consulship of Q. Fabius and Tiberius Sempronius, when
the strain of the Punic War was most severely felt. It forbade any woman
to have in her possession more than half an ounce of gold, to wear a dress
of various colours or to ride in a two-horsed vehicle within a mile of
the City or of any Roman town unless she was going to take part in some
religious function. The two Brutuses-M. Junius and T. Junius-both tribunes
of the plebs, defended the law and declared that they would not allow it
to be repealed; many of the nobility came forward to speak in favour of
the repeal or against it; the Capitol was crowded with supporters and opponents
of the proposal; the matrons could not be kept indoors either by the authority
of the magistrates or the orders of their husbands or their own sense of
propriety. They filled all the streets and blocked the approaches to the
Forum; they implored the men who were on their way thither to allow the
women to resume their former adornments now that the commonwealth was flourishing
and private fortunes increasing every day. Their numbers were daily augmented
by those who came up from the country towns. At last they ventured to approach
the consuls and praetors and other magistrates with their demands. One
of the consuls at all events was inexorably opposed to their request-M.
Porcius Cato. He spoke as follows in defence of the law:
34.2
"If we had, each one of us, made it a rule to uphold the rights and authority
of the husband in our own households we should not now have this trouble
with the whole body of our women. As things are now our liberty of action,
which has been checked and rendered powerless by female despotism at home,
is actually crushed and trampled on here in the Forum, and because we were
unable to withstand them individually we have now to dread their united
strength. I used to think that it was a fabulous story which tells us that
in a certain island the whole of the male sex was extirpated by a conspiracy
amongst the women; there is no class of women from whom the gravest dangers
may not arise, if once you allow intrigues, plots, secret cabals to go
on. I can hardly make up my mind which is worse, the affair itself or the
disastrous precedent set up. The latter concerns us as consuls and magistrates;
the former has to do more with you, Quirites. Whether the measure before
you is for the good of the commonwealth or not is for you to determine
by your votes; this tumult amongst the women, whether a spontaneous movement
or due to your instigation, M. Fundanius and L. Valerius, certainly points
to failure on the part of the magistrates, but whether it reflects more
on you tribunes or on the consuls I do not know. It brings the greater
discredit on you if you have carried your tribunitian agitation so far
as to create unrest among the women, but more disgrace upon us if we have
to submit to laws being imposed upon us through fear of a secession on
their part, as we had to do formerly on occasions of the secession of the
plebs. It was not without a feeling of shame that I made my way into the
Forum through a regular army of women. Had not my respect for the dignity
and modesty of some amongst them, more than any consideration for them
as a whole, restrained me from letting them be publicly rebuked by a consul,
I should have said, 'What is this habit you have formed of running abroad
and blocking the streets and accosting men who are strangers to you? Could
you not each of you put the very same question to your husbands at home?
Surely you do not make yourselves more attractive in public than in private,
to other women's husbands more than to your own? If matrons were kept by
their natural modesty within the limits of their rights, it would be most
unbecoming for you to trouble yourselves even at home about the laws which
may be passed or repealed here.' Our ancestors would have no woman transact
even private business except through her guardian, they placed them under
the tutelage of parents or brothers or husbands. We suffer them now to
dabble in politics and mix themselves up with the business of the Forum
and public debates and election contests. What are they doing now in the
public roads and at the street corners but recommending to the plebs the
proposal of their tribunes and voting for the repeal of the law. Give the
reins to a headstrong nature, to a creature that has not been tamed, and
then hope that they will themselves set bounds to their licence if you
do not do it yourselves. This is the smallest of those restrictions which
have been imposed upon women by ancestral custom or by laws, and which
they submit to with such impatience. What they really want is unrestricted
freedom, or to speak the truth, licence, and if they win on this occasion
what is there that they will not attempt?
34.3
"Call to mind all the regulations respecting women by which our ancestors
curbed their licence and made them obedient to their husbands, and yet
in spite of all those restrictions you can scarcely hold them in. If you
allow them to pull away these restraints and wrench them out one after
another, and finally put themselves on an equality with their husbands,
do you imagine that you will be able to tolerate them? From the moment
that they become your fellows they will become your masters. But surely,
you say, what they object to is having a new restriction imposed upon them,
they are not deprecating the assertion of a right but the infliction of
a wrong. No, they are demanding the abrogation of a law which you enacted
by your suffrages and which the practical experience of all these years
has approved and justified. This they would have you repeal; that means
that by rescinding this they would have you weaken all. No law is equally
agreeable to everybody, the only question is whether it is beneficial on
the whole and good for the majority. If everyone who feels himself personally
aggrieved by a law is to destroy it and get rid of it, what is gained by
the whole body of citizens making laws which those against whom they are
enacted can in a short time repeal? I want, however, to learn the reason
why these excited matrons have run out into the streets and scarcely keep
away from the Forum and the Assembly. Is it that those taken prisoners
by Hannibal-their fathers and husbands and children and brothers-may be
ransomed? The republic is a long way from this misfortune, and may it ever
remain so! Still, when this did happen, you refused to do so in spite of
their dutiful entreaties. But, you may say, it is not dutiful affection
and solicitude for those they love that has brought them together; they
are going to welcome Mater Idaea on her way from Phrygian Pessinus. What
pretext in the least degree respectable is put forward for this female
insurrection? 'That we may shine,' they say, 'in gold and purple, that
we may ride in carriages on festal and ordinary days alike, as though in
triumph for having defeated and repealed a law after capturing and forcing
from you your votes.' ...
34.8
After these speeches in support of and against the law the women poured
out into the streets the next day in much greater force and went in a body
to the house of the two Brutuses, who were vetoing their colleagues' proposal,
and beset all the doors, nor would they desist till the tribunes had abandoned
their opposition. There was no doubt now that the tribes would be unanimous
in rescinding the law. It was abrogated twenty years after it had been
made. After this matter was settled Cato at once left the City and with
twenty-five ships of war, five of which belonged to the allies, sailed
to the port of Luna, where the army had also received orders to muster.
He had published an edict through the whole length of the coast requiring
ships of every description to be assembled at Luna, and there he left orders
that they should follow him to the Port of the Pyrenees, it being his intention
to advance against the enemy with his full naval strength. Sailing past
the Ligurian coast and the Gulf of Gaul, they assembled there by the appointed
day. Cato sailed on to Rhoda and expelled the Spanish garrison who were
holding the fort. From Rhoda a favourable wind brought him to Emporiae.
Here he disembarked the whole of his force with the exception of the crews
of the vessels.