From: rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu (Roger Squires)
Subject: Re: Frontlash
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 92 06:39:19 GMT
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque


Mr. Morris writes, awhile ago:
>                       Sunday, the 18th of October, 1992
>
>The place is Rome, the time is 195 B.C., the occasion, a vote
>to repeal the Oppian law---a public austerity and piety measure
>enacted 215 B.C., at the lowest point in Rome's fortunes
>during the Second (Hannibalic) Punic War. The measure enjoined women
>not to possess more than half an ounce of gold or wear a
>coloured garment or ride in a carriage within a mile of Rome,
>except during religious festivals. Women have taken to the
>streets to lobby men to overturn the law. The following
>speech is attributed to Marcus Porcius Cato (aka Cato the
>Elder, also Cato the Censor) by Livy:
>
>    If each of us, citizens, had determined to assert his
>    rights and dignity as a husband with respect to his
>    own spouse, we should have less trouble with the sex
>    as a whole; as it is, our liberty, destroyed at
>    at home by female violence, even here in the Forum
>    is crushed and trodden underfoot, and because we have
>    not kept them individually under control, we dread
>    them collectively. . . .
>    . . . Our ancestors permitted no woman to conduct
>    even personal business without a guardian to intervene in
>    her behalf; they wished them to be under the control of fathers,
>    brothers, husbands; we (Heaven help us!) allow them now even
>    to interfere in public affairs, yes, and to visit the Forum
>    and our informal and formal sessions.
>    . . . It is complete
>    liberty or, rather, if we wish to speak the truth, complete
>    licence that they desire.
>       . . . If they win in this, what will they not attempt? Review
>    all the laws with which your forefathers restrained their
>    licence and made them subject to their husbands; even with
>    all these bonds you can scarcely control them. What of this?
>    If you suffer them to seize these bonds one by one and wrench
>    themselves free and finally to be placed on a parity with
>    their husbands, do you think that you will be able to endure
>    them? The moment they begin to be your equals, they will be
>    your superiors.
>    . . . My opinion is that the Oppian law should on no account
>    be repealed; whatever is your decision, I pray that all the gods
>    may prosper it. [Livy, _Ab Urbe Condita_, Bk. XXXIV. ii.1--iv.19,
>                     Loeb edition, volume IX, pages 415--427,
>                     translation by Evan T. Sage]
>   
>Well, the Oppian law was repealed and there you have it.
>
>I'd like very much to go on and analyze this ill-starred
>moment in more detail, its contribution to and reverberation
>through the continuing downslide of Western civilization,
>civilization that is as our forefathers once knew it.
>

	Don't bother someone already has :^)

. . . Is it not perfectly right, therefore, that the vilest of sinners
Hate these hypocrites?  If they snap at you, turn on them, bite them!

One of this sour-faced crew used to cry out, over and over,
"Where is the Julian law? asleep?"  Laronia answered,
Smiling, "O happy age, with you to censor our morals!
Rome may be decent again with this Cato descended from Heaven,
But -- tell me this, my friend:  where do you purchase your perfume,
All that balsam juice your hairy neck fairly reeks of?
Don't be ashamed; let me know the address, the name of the druggist.
Or if we have to take up the laws and statutes, you ought to
Cite the Scantinian first, and the sections enjoining you fairies.
Go investigate men.  They do more bad things than women.
Safety in numbers, you know, and your hollow squares will protect you.
How you stick together, you queens!  Our own sex's behavior 
Holds no record like yours, case histories utterly loathsome.
Media doesn't lap girls, nor Flora go down on Catulla,
But Hispo takes on young men, and is pale from two occupations,
Do we ever plead at the bar?  Does the courthouse ring with our bawling?
Some of us do eat raw meat, and a few might be lady-wrestlers,
But look at you, spinning the wool, and mincing along with full baskets,
Defter at weaving than ever Penelope was, or Arachne,
Doing the work that any cheap drab might squat on a log and accomplish.
Don't think I don't know why Hister bequeathed to his freedman
All he owned; why, in life, he rewarded his consort so richly.
She who sleeps third in a big wide bed is certain to prosper.
Marry, and shut your mouth; the wages of silence are jewels!
After all this, do you think our sex deserves a verdict of Guilty?
That's like pardoning crows and laying all blame on the pigeons."

That was telling them off, and they fluttered away, the fake Stoics,
Put to flight by the truth. . . .
			Juvenal, Satire ii, Against hypocritical queens

	I first thought I would tear apart what Livy has C the Elder
	say, point out all the rhetorical flourishes, look up the
	references to earlier laws, see how much is actually
	substance, and how much is hot air (a good excercise, IMHO),
	but I've just started _The Satires_ and noticed this...

	Well, of course it was a different age, a different Cato,
	and I'm not sure it is fair to C. Secundus, but the parallels
	are unmistakable, and it's such a good comeback!  Whether either
	speech reflects reality, either in reportage or in the subject,
	I couldn't say; those "less fortunate mortals," cannot now
	defend themselves, "Those whose ashes lie by the great roads
	out of the city."

>                     Mike Morris

Roger Squires
rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu