Livy wrote this history of Rome from Italy in the age of Augustus. This is Book 34. In the last book, Roman armies under Flamininus broke Philip of Macedon in the hills of Thessaly, and a herald at the Isthmian Games proclaimed the Greeks free of Macedonian garrisons.

In the Forum a wartime law, the Oppian law, comes up for repeal: limits on women’s gold and carriages, now hated in a city flush with peace. Cato the Elder, known for old-Roman hardness, speaks against it; the matrons crowd the approaches and turn a household rule into public theater. Cato then takes a command in Spain and governs as he talks, severe and against luxury. Nabis of Sparta still troubles the Greek settlement, and Spain still costs Rome commanders. Livy sets the panic over display beside those wars because the prizes of empire come home with captured arms. Greek manners have begun to reach the elite, and Cato tries to hold them back. This is the book where victory starts to change the victors’ houses.