Rambles in Rome / An Archæological and Historical Guide to the Museums, Galleries, Villas, Churches, and Antiquities of Rome and the Campagna

by S. Russell Forbes

It was decorated with the rams of the captured ships of Antony and Cleopatra. It was the custom to speak from the circular edge; but when the Temple of Cæsar was built, it was erected close up to his rostra, on the site where the people had previously stood, and so they had to turn about and address the people from the flat edge. "As he was seated on the rostra at the festival of Pan, Mark Antony placed upon his brow a royal diadem" (Velleius Paterculus, ii. 56).

MARK ANTONY'S SPEECH.

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.

THE CURTIAN LAKE.

Crossing the Sacred Way, which passes along the front of Cæsar's Tomb, we arrive at the space occupied by the shops destroyed in excavating. The construction remaining shows that they were rebuilt at a late date. It will be noticed that the soil is damp and sandy. This spot was once marshy, and took its name from Mettius Curtius, a leader of the Sabines, getting mired here in the battle which took place about the carrying off of the women. Plutarch, Livy, Dionysius, and Ovid agree in this; and not from the fable related by Livy (vii. 16) of the Forum opening, and Marcus Curtius jumping in, horse, armour, and all. The former event is commemorated in a relief in stone now in the Capitol; whilst the latter fable is depicted in the marble relief now in the Borghese Museum.

THE PEDESTAL OF THE STATUE OF DOMITIAN.

The Statue was destroyed by the people after his death, and the base of the pedestal is all we have left, standing upon the travertine pavement of the Forum. It is interesting to archæologists as putting to rest the arguments in reference to the names and positions of the different buildings in the Forum. The poet Statius ("Silvæ," i. 1, 22) describes the relative position of the different buildings and this statue. He tells us that the statue was situated in the middle of the Forum, near the Curtian Lake. In front of it was the temple of the deified Julius; behind it were the Temples of Vespasian and Concord; on one side the Basilica Julia, and on the other the Basilica Æmilia; whilst the rider looked towards the Temple of Vesta and the Imperial Palace.