and for that reason we cannot be sure that it was a comitial law.[2052] To the same period belongs the plebiscite of P. and M. Silius concerning weights and measures.[2053] The first comitial sumptuary statute is the lex Metilia (217), probably tribunician, passed under the influence of C. Flaminius and L. Aemilius, who were censors in 220. It prescribed certain rules for the preparation of cloth.[2054] The object, in Lange’s[2055] opinion, was to strike at the luxury of the nobles through the guild of fullers. It was a warning to them, he asserts, which however they failed to heed. If this was indeed the object, the means were surprisingly feeble. The next sumptuary law was the plebiscite of C. Oppius, 215, directed against the luxury of wealthy women. It forbade a woman to wear more than a half ounce of gold or a dress of various colors or to ride in a carriage in a city or town or within a mile of either, excepting when engaged in public worship.[2056] The author must have sympathized with the tendency of Flaminius, and the law was supported, or at least not opposed, by the nobility. Twenty years afterward their best representatives strove in vain to maintain it against the rising tide of wealth and luxury.[2057] The influence of Flaminius on legislation may be traced still farther. Under the economic distress of the war with Hannibal the plebs began to lapse into clientage to the nobles. In spite of the principle that the patron should accept no honorarium for legal service,[2058] the nobles began by the requisition of gifts to render the commons tributary to themselves.[2059] The chief occasion for these exactions was found in the Saturnalia, which was reconstituted in 217.[2060] To check the abuse the Publician plebiscite mentioned by Macrobius,[2061] undoubtedly of C. Publicius Bibulus, the popular tribune of 209,[2062] prohibited all gifts from the poor to the rich on that festival with the exception of wax candles. It was supplemented in 204 by the plebiscite of M. Cincius Alimentus,[2063] which absolutely forbade gifts and fees for legal service.[2064] The prohibition of a magistrate’s acceptance of gifts for the performance of official duty was undoubtedly included in it.[2065] Moreover it forbade all gifts above a specified amount, but with exceptions in favor of various relatives and benefactors.[2066]