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Updated: June 20, 2025
Sometimes the language of passion replaced that of reason in his harangues to the crowds that pressed round the Rostra. "The beasts that prowl about Italy have holes and lurking-places where they may make their beds. You who fight and die for Italy enjoy but the blessings of air and light. These alone are your heritage. Homeless, unsettled, you wander to and fro with your wives and children.
But the government party was determined not to yield, consul stood against consul, Gnaeus Octavius against Lucius Cinna, and tribune against tribune; both sides appeared in great part armed on the day and at the place of voting. The tribunes of the senatorial party interposed their veto; when swords were drawn against them even on the rostra, Octavius employed force against force.
She was accustomed rather to dictate and be the victorious performer, and though now she was not anxious to occupy the pulpit being too strictly bred to wish for a post publicly in any of the rostra and meant still less to dispossess the present speaker of the place he filled so well, she yearned to join him: and as that could not be done by a stranger approving, she panted to dissent.
The lower classes, which were numerous and poor, eagerly took up the scheme, and continually clamoured round the speakers at the rostra, demanding to have it put to the vote. But the Senate and the nobles thought that it was not a redistribution, but the absolute destruction of Rome which the tribunes were demanding, and in their anger rallied round Camillus.
When some extravagant honours had been decreed to him in the Senate, it happened that he was sitting above the Rostra, and when the consuls and prætors approached with all the Senate behind them, without rising from his seat, but just as if he were transacting business with private persons, he answered that the honours required rather to be contracted than enlarged.
"Truly," he said bowing, "I am a Roman, and the barbarians are in Italy. When they are gone, I will fight Varro on the rostra, in the Senate. Perhaps I shall even lead my clients to drag him, stabbed, from his house."
Cæsar was a spectator, being seated at the Rostra on a golden chair in a triumphal robe; and Antonius was one of those who ran in the sacred race, for he was consul.
Next day, however, Cæsar the man who formerly as prætor had bidden Q. Catulus speak on the ground below now brought Vettius on to the rostra, and placed him on an elevation to which Bibulus, though consul, was prevented from aspiring.
His head was cut off and placed on the Rostra, and many other heads also. He was the first consul whose head was exposed on the Rostra. Other atrocities are mentioned by Appian, c. 72, &c. It was the fashion in England less than a hundred years back to place traitors' heads on Temple Bar, London. His head was fixed on the Rostra.
The column of Phocas is also erect; and you see some portions of the Rostra fitted together out of fragments discovered near by.
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