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Above the rostra was the Senate-house, said to have been first erected by Tullus Hostilius; and near the Comitium, or place of meeting for the patrician Curiæ. This area was at first uncovered, but a roof was erected at the close of the second Pu'nic war.
And at the feast of the Lupercalia , when the consul Antony placed a crown upon his head in the rostra several times, he as often put it away, and sent it to the Capitol for Jupiter, the Best and the Greatest.
And 'in a few abnormal instances, particularly in watering-places, the rostra would even overhang the altar, or occupy a sort of gallery behind it. During the earlier part of the century, an hour-glass, in a wood or iron frame, was still the not unfrequent appendage to a pulpit. In the Elizabethan period it had been general.
The tribunician veto was interposed; Caesar contented himself with disregarding it. Bibulus and Cato sprang to the rostra, harangued the multitude, and instigated the usual riot; Caesar ordered that they should be led away by lictors from the Forum, and took care that otherwise no harm should befall them it was for his interest that the political comedy should remain such as it was.
VII. On which account I give my vote for a decree in this form: 'As Servius Sulpicius Rufus, the son of Quintus, of the Lemonian tribe, at a most critical period of the republic, and being ill with a very serious and dangerous disease, preferred the authority of the senate and the safety of the republic to his own life, and struggled against the violence and severity of his illness, in order to arrive at the camp of Antonius, to which the senate had sent him; and as he when he had almost arrived at the camp, being overwhelmed by the violence of the disease, has lost his life in discharging a most important office of the republic; and as his death has been in strict correspondence to a life passed with the greatest integrity and honour, during which he, Servius Sulpicius, has often been of great service to the republic, both as a private individual and in the discharge of various magistracies; and as he, being such a man, has encountered death on behalf of the republic while employed on an embassy; the senate decrees that a brazen pedestrian statue of Servius Sulpicius be erected in the rostra in compliance with the resolution of this order, and that his children and posterity shall have a place round this statue of five feet in every direction, from which to behold the games and gladiatorial combats, because he died in the cause of the republic; and that this reason be inscribed on the pedestal of the statue; and that Carus Pansa and Aulus Hirtius the consuls, one or both of them, if it seem good to them, shall command the quaestors of the city to let out a contract for making that pedestal and that statue, and erecting them in the rostra; and that whatever price they contract for, they shall take care the amount is given and paid to the contractor, and as in old times the senate has exerted its authority with respect to the obsequies of, and honours paid to brave men, it now decrees that he shall be carried to the tomb on the day of his funeral with the greatest possible solemnity.
Silius having been a senator and a man of other official standing, the procession passes from the Caelian Hill along the Sacred Way to the Forum, as far as the Rostra or speaking-platform.
This was the turning-point of his career. He returned suddenly, and from that day became the enemy of the senate, the avenger of his brother, and the champion of the multitude. His oratory is described as vehement beyond example; so carried away did he become, that he found it necessary to have a slave behind him on the rostra, who, by playing a flute, should recall him to moderation.
He understood the snare, and refused. What was to be done next? He would soon be gone to the East. Rome and its hollow adulations would lie behind him, and their one opportunity would be gone also. They employed some one to place a diadem on the head of his statue which stood upon the Rostra. It was done publicly, in the midst of a vast crowd, in Caesar's presence.
Numbers of women of the first quality put themselves in their way, and present their hands for stripes as scholars do to a master being persuaded that the pregnant gain an easy delivery by it, and that the barren are enabled to conceive. Cæsar wore a triumphal robe that day, and seated himself in a golden chair upon the rostra, to see the ceremony.
Bishop Middleton, on the other hand, in those pleasant and comprehensive volumes which are still to this day the great storehouse of materials for Cicero's biography, is as blind to his faults as though he were himself delivering a panegyric in the Rostra at Rome.
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