Hortensia says, Why should we pay taxes when we do not share in the offices, honors, military commands, nor in short, the government for which you fight between yourselves with such harmful results? You say, because it is wartime. When has there not been war? And when have women paid taxes? By nature of their sex, women are absolved from paying taxes among all mankind. Our mothers did once rise superior to their sex and made contributions when you faced the loss of the empire and the city itself through the conflict with the Carthaginians. But they funded their contributions voluntarily from their jewelry, not from their landed property, their fields, their dowries, or their houses, without which it is impossible for free women to live.