Oppius
3. C. Oppius, tribune of the plebs, B. C. 213, in the middle of the second Punic war, carried a law to curtail the expenses and luxuries of Roman women. It enacted that no woman should have more than half an ounce of gold, nor wear a dress of different colours, nor ride in a carriage in the city, or in any town, or within a mile of it, unless on account of public sacrifices. This law was repealed in B. C. 195, notwithstanding the vehement opposition of the elder Cato (Liv. 34.1_8; V. Max. 9.1.3; Tac. Ann. 3.33, 34).
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.