Origin
The Lex Oppia had been primarily an economic measure in response to serious financial issues during the Second Punic War. However, the restrictions it imposed laid the framework for later sumptuary legislation designed to control expenditure on extravagance for social rather than economic reasons. Notable sumptuary legislation passed after the Lex Oppia's creation includes the Lex Fannia of 161 BC and the Lex Didia of 143 BC. The Lex Fannia was a statute that limited dinner expenditure, the kind of food that could be offered and the number of guests, while the Lex Didia was an application of the Lex Fannia to the entire Italian peninsula that imposed sanctions on providers of, as well as guests at, illegal dinners.
The basis for concern about luxury and extravagance was mixed. It was a universal assumption that indulgence in luxury could undermine traditional military virtues. Also, a devotion to luxury was considered to be a stimulus to greed, and thus a major contributor to the increase in corruption. Finally, there was a widespread tendency to correlate lavish and self-indulgent expenditures with uneconomical use of personal or family fortunes.
Read more about this topic: Lex Oppia
Famous quotes containing the word origin:
“We have got rid of the fetish of the divine right of kings, and that slavery is of divine origin and authority. But the divine right of property has taken its place. The tendency plainly is towards ... “a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.””
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“The origin of storms is not in clouds,
our lightning strikes when the earth rises,
spillways free authentic power:
dead John Brown’s body walking from a tunnel
to break the armored and concluded mind.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)