It was about this time that the Oppian law came up for repeal.

The stipulations of this law were as follows: No woman should have in her dress above half an ounce of gold, nor wear a garment of different colors, nor ride in a carriage in the city or in any town, or within a mile of it, unless upon occasion of a public sacrifice.

This sumptuary law was passed during the public distress consequent upon Hannibal's invasion of Italy.

It was repealed eighteen years afterward, upon petition of the Roman ladies, though strenuously opposed by Cato (Livy 34, 1; Tacitus, Annales, 3, 33).

The increase of wealth among the Romans, the spoils wrung from their victims as a portion of the price of defeat, the contact of the legions with the softer, more civilized, more sensuous races of Greece and Asia Minor, laid the foundations upon which the social evil was to rise above the city of the seven hills, and finally crush her.