broidered robes, or go
abroad at night, except she was a prostitute; he forbade all but panders
to wear gold rings or fine cloth. And it was said that he succeeded
admirably in his legislation. The Spartans had such a contempt for
cowards that those who fled in battle were compelled to wear a low
dress of patches and shape, and, moreover, to wear a long beard half
shaved, so that any one meeting them might give them a stroke. The
Oppian law of Rome restricted women in their dress and extravagance, and
the Roman knights had the privilege of wearing a gold ring. The ancient
Babylonians held it to be indecent to wear a walking stick without an
apple, a rose, or an eagle engraved on the top of it. The first Inca of
Peru is said to have made himself popular by allowing his people to wear
ear-rings--a distinction formerly confined to the royal family. By the
code of China, the dress of the people was subject to minute regulation,
and any transgression was punished by fifty blows of the bamboo. And he
who omitted to go into mourning on the death of a relation, or laid it
aside too soon, was similarly punished. Don Edward of Portugal, in 1434,
passed a law to suppress luxury in dress and diet, and with his nobles
set an example. In Florence a like law was passed in 1471. And in
Venice, laws regulating nearly all the expenses of families, in table,
clothes, gaming and traveling. A law of the Muscovites obliged the
people to crop their beards and shorten their clothes. In Zurich a law
prohibited all except strangers to use carriages, and in Basle no
citizen or inhabitant was allowed to have a servant behind his carriage.
About 1292, Philip the Fair, of France, by edict, ordered how many suits
of clothes, and at what price, and how many dishes at table should be
allowed, and that no woman should keep a cur.

The Irish laws regulated the dress, and even its colors, according to
the rank and station of the wearer. And the Brehon laws forbade men to
wear brooches so long as to project and be dangerous to those passing
near. In Scotland, a statute enacted that women should not come to Kirk
or market with their faces covered, and that they should dress according
to their estate. In the City of London, in the thirteenth century, women
were not allowed to wear, in the highway or the market, a hood furred
with other than lamb-skin or rabbit-skin. In the Middle Ages, it was not
infrequent to compel prostitutes to wear a particular dress, so