How Did Livy Led To The Repeal Of The Oppian Law

This paper is an examination of Livy’s reconstruction of the events in Rome that led to the repeal of the Oppian Law in 195 B.C.E. The law was passed by the Roman authorities twenty years prior, as part of the efforts to support Rome’s war against Hannibal of Carthage (Sources, 69). Livy’s account of the law’s repeal begins by describing the restrictions on women set forth by the law. These restrictions include “owning more than half an ounce of gold, wearing fancy clothes, or riding in carriages through the city or town” (Sources, 69A). Livy then describes the scene at the Capitol when protests broke out demanding the law’s repeal. Apart from the growing number of women that publicly protested the law, Livy’s account depicts a divided atmosphere …show more content…
The presence of this influence indicates that although women were generally viewed as the inferior sex, they were valued in their households as individuals. Lucius Valerius used this sentiment when he argued that men “should act as their guardians and keep them in hand, but not in slavery” (Sources, 70B). The victory of women in the Oppian Law’s repeal is but one of the rare occasions when women’s influence overcame their lack of power in the public arena. It is difficult to comprehend the extent of this influence because men historians, like Cato and Livy, rarely reported about the lives of women in their societies. In fact, even this chronicled struggle against the Oppian Law was not exactly about women in general. The significance of Livy’s historical text is limited in that it only illuminates the concerns of women from wealthy households. Majority of women from the lower classes would not have had the ability to acquire gold and fancy clothes, or hire chariots. Therefore, in truth, this event was more about the need of the upper class to distinguish themselves from the lower classes rather than the liberation of women in general. It may even be argued that the men who voted for the law’s repeal acted out of their desire to display their household’s status and distinction. Lucius Valerius subtly appealed to men’s vanity when he invoked the ability of the wives of their Latin allies to flaunt their wealth and how the sight of which “can wound men’s spirits” (Sources, 70B). The Oppian Law not only put Roman wives below that of their allies, it also made women from wealthy families equal in appearance to women from lower classes. The law’s repeal was, therefore, a victory of the wealthy over the poor and a