The original Rostra was first called the Suggestum or Pulpit, but in
A.U.C. 416 the name was changed into Rostra (beaks).
"The prows from the six ships captured from the Antiates were ordered
to be placed as decorations on the Suggestum in the Forum, which was
hence called Rostra" (Livy, viii. 14; Florus, i. 11; Pliny, xxiv. 11).
"The Rostra stood on the Comitium in front of the Curia" (Varro), from
which the orators harangued the people assembled in the open air; and
it was evidently only a temporary structure, probably of wood, and not
a building like the other two Rostra. It stood upon a circular
basement, but the top was square; on the outside were fixed the brazen
beaks which belonged to the captive vessels of the Antiates. About the
Rostra were placed the statues of the ambassadors put to death by Lar
Tolumnius, king of Veii, and others who suffered on similar occasions;
the three Fates, Horatius Cocles, Camillus, Hercules, the father of
Vitellius, and others who deserved well of their country.
"When Caius Gracchus brought in his bill to regulate the courts of
judicature, there was one thing very remarkable: whereas the orators
before him, in all addresses to the people, stood with their faces
towards the Senate House and the Comitium, he then, for the first
time, turned the other way,--that is to say, towards the Forum,--and
continued to speak in that position ever after. By this he intimated
that the people ought to be addressed, and not the senate" (Plutarch).
Suetonius tells us that on the death of Augustus "two funeral orations
were pronounced in his praise, one before the Temple of Julius by
Tiberius, and the other before the Rostra, under the old shops, by
Drusus." Some read this passage, "from the old Rostra;" but our
rendering is more correct, though in either case he is referring to
the Rostra that stood in front of the Curia.
The first time Cicero spoke from the Rostra was when he delivered his
oration for the Manilian Law, A.U.C. 687, when in his forty-first
year. After his assassination, the head and hands of Cicero were
placed upon this Rostra, from where he had so often addressed the
Romans--"that very Rostra, which he had made his own; nor was there a
less concourse to see him there than had formerly been to hear him"
(Florus, iv. 6). "That everybody might see them in the very place
where he had formerly harangued with so much vehemence" (Dion Cassius,
"Augustus").
The form of this Rostra is preserved to us, being represented on a
coin.
There is an important passage in Pliny which shows the exact site of
the Rostra, as it was used to mark the hour of noon. When the summoner
caught sight of the sun passing the edge of the Rostra, he declared
the hour of noon. A man standing on this site will roughly represent
the Rostra, and as the gun fires at mid-day the edge of the sun can be
seen coming past him by a person standing by the pedestal at the bank
in front of S. Adriano, who will roughly represent the summoner. We
have tried this numerous times with our audience, and it is the only
spot on the Forum where it answers.
[Illustration: THE ROSTRA.]
"The _accensus_ of the consuls proclaiming mid-day aloud, as soon as,
from the Senate House, he caught sight of the sun between the Rostra
and the Græcostasis: he also proclaimed the last hour, when the sun
had gone off the Mænian Column to the Prison" (Pliny, vii. 60).