Public Life Public Life 173.
Women demonstrate and obtain repeal of the Oppian law.
Late 1st cent. B.C.-early 1st cent. In 215 B.C., after its disastrous defeat by Hannibal at Cannae, Rome passed the Oppian law, an emergency measure which limited women's use of expensive goods. Twenty years later, the crisis having long since passed, the law was repealed against the objections of many conservatives, here represented by the consul and champion of traditional values, Marcus Porcius Cato. Livy's reconstruction of the debate over the law's repeal devotes considerable space to ethical issues raised in legislation initiated in his own time by the Emperor Augustus.