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Updated: June 20, 2025
This pulpit was adorned with the brazen beaks of ships which had been taken by the Romans in former wars The name of such a beak was rostrum; in the plural, rostra. The pulpit was itself, therefore, called the Rostra, that is, The Beaks; and the people were addressed from it on great public occasions.
Now when Metellus saw that all was clear about the Rostra, and that his opponents were flying through the Forum, being quite confident that he had got the victory, he ordered the armed men to go away, and coming forward in an orderly manner he attempted to conduct the proceedings about the law.
"And whom do you want to go?" "Crassus!" they cried. Passion had risen too high for words. The Clodians began to spit on the Milonians. The Milonians drew swords and cut the heads of the Clodians. The working men, being unarmed, got the worst of the conflict; and Clodius was flung from the Rostra. The Senate was summoned to call Pompey to account.
The column of Phocas is also erect; and you see some portions of the Rostra fitted together out of fragments discovered near by.
His revenge was not satisfied even with the death of his victim; he forbade the burial of the dead bodies: he gave orders anticipated, it is true, in this respect by Sulla that the heads of the senators slain should be fixed to the rostra in the Forum; he ordered particular corpses to be dragged through the Forum, and that of Gaius Caesar to be stabbed afresh at the tomb of Quintus Varius, whom Caesar presumably had once impeached; he publicly embraced the man who delivered to him as he sat at table the head of Antonius, whom he had been with difficulty restrained from seeking out in his hiding-place, an slaying with his own hand.
This was not very skilfully set for him, and owing to his old age it did not heal properly. But his funeral was a source of glory to the Emperor, to the age in which he lived, and even to the Roman Forum and the rostra. His panegyric was pronounced by Cornelius Tacitus, and Virginius's good fortune was crowned by this, that he had the most eloquent man in Rome to speak his praises.
Part of the curved wall of the Rostra may still be seen built of large blocks of travertine; and in front is a fixed platform, where a large number of people could stand and listen to the speaker.
All were silent: Sulla descended from the rostra, and on foot, attended only by his friends, returned to his dwelling through the midst of that very populace which eight years before had razed his house to the ground. Character of Sulla
In a short time, by this conduct, he wrought himself so much into the favour and affection of the public, that when, upon his going to Ostia, a report was spread in the city that he had been way-laid and slain, the people never ceased cursing the soldiers for traitors, and the senate as parricides, until one or two persons, and presently after several others, were brought by the magistrates upon the rostra, who assured them that he was alive, and not far from the city, on his way home.
He had lived to see them both consuls, the same year and during the whole year also; the younger succeeding the elder for the last six months . The senate honoured him after his decease with a funeral at the public expense, and with a statue in the Rostra, which had this inscription upon the base: "One who was steadfast in his loyalty to his prince."
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