Rome’s victory in the Second Punic War has caused both enslaved people and material wealth from the conquered areas to begin to flow into the hands of the Roman ruling class, transforming their lives from one of traditional agrarian simplicity to ostentatious display and unbounded extravagance.
The victory has made wealthier Romans aware of the possibilities of different, more comfortable life styles, and given them access to more varied, more exotic and more luxurious products.
During this period, there is an inevitable change of mores, which in practice means largely the conduct of individuals in the upper strata of Roman society; and with the financial woes eliminated, there as no longer a reason for women to restrict their expenditures.
With Rome rich in Carthaginian wealth, attempts to check self-indulgent expenditure with sumptuary legislation prove vain.
Consequently, two tribunes of the plebs, Marcus Fundanius and Lucius Valerius, propose repealing the Lex Oppia, the sumptuary law established in in 215 BCE at the height of the war during the days of national catastrophe after the Battle of Cannae.
The supporters of the Lex Oppia are led by two tribunes of the plebs, Marcus Junius Brutus and Publius Junius Brutus, and consul Marcus Porcius Cato, also known as Cato the Elder, who had been elected in 195 BCE.
Cato argues that the law removes the shame of poverty because it makes all women dress in an equal fashion.
Cato insists that if women can engage in a clothes-contest, they will either feel shame in the presence of other women, or on the contrary, they will delight in a rather base victory as a result of extending themselves beyond their means.
He also declares that a woman’s desire to spend money is a disease that cannot be cured, but only restrained; the removal of Lex Oppia, Cato said, would render society helpless in limiting the expenditures of women.
Cato pronounces that Roman women already corrupted by luxury are like wild animals who have once tasted blood in the sense that they can no longer be trusted to restrain themselves from rushing into an orgy of extravagance.
The proponents of abolishing the Lex Oppia are led by Marcus Fundanius and Lucius Valerius, as well as the other consul, Lucius Valerius Flaccus, elected in 195 BCE.
Flaccus contests Cato’s assumption that there would be no rivalry among women if they did not own anything by reminding the audience of the suffering and anger Roman women feel when they see the wives of Latin allies wearing ornaments of which they have been deprived.
As nobles speak for or against the repeal of the Lex Oppia, the matrons of Rome crowd the Capitol.
They cannot be kept indoors by either the authority of the magistrates or the orders of their husbands or their own sense of propriety.
They block all the streets of the city and the approaches to the Forum, and implore the men as they descend to the Forum to allow the women to resume their former adornments.
After the speeches against and in favor of the Lex Oppia, the women pour into the streets the next day in greater numbers and besiege the doors of the two Brutuses.
The dissenting tribunes eventually give in to the persistent demanding of the Roman matrons, and the Lex Oppia is repealed in 195 BCE.
