Sumptuary laws
idea · 2 works · 2 mentions · 2 anchored passages
sumptuary laws · the old sumptuary laws
in the texts
Apologeticum
Roman laws restricting extravagant spending, later abandoned.
Whither have those laws gone that curbed extravagance and ambition — which ordered that no more than a hundred asses be spent upon a dinner, that no more than one hen be served, and that not a fattened one;
Law in a Free State
Historical laws regulating personal expenditure and consumption, cited as an analogous example of paternalistic State legislation whose defence has failed.
It is on all-fours with the defence of the usury laws, with the defence of State-enforced religion, with the defence of the old sumptuary laws, and with hundreds of other State measures of past and present times, forbidding the people to rush on to their own destruction.