When Cæsar was killed, it was not in the Capitol, as Shakespeare makes
it, nor in the Senate House upon the Forum, but in Pompey's Senate
House (see page 195). From there the body was carried to his house,
and next day into the Forum, on its way to the Campus Martius, and was
placed in front of the Rostra Julia for some friend to make the
funeral oration over it. Mark Antony mounted the rostra, and there
made his famous speech, "which moved the people to that degree that
they immediately burned the body in that very place, and afterwards
interred his ashes" (Dion Cassius, "Cæsar").
Livy ("Epit." xcvi.) says that "Cæsar's body was burned before the
plebeian rostra." Dion Cassius says his temple-tomb was built on the
very spot where his body was burned.
Unfortunately Antony's address has not come down to us, so we must
accept Shakespeare's immortal version.