rostra
Boetius seu auctor de Disciplina Scholarium cap. 2 :Cœpit summa pedum cum tortis tendere Rostris.
Rostratis tabulatisque calceis ut Regina incedere, etc.Ejusmodi
.... soleæ substringitur arcu Calceus obliquo, pedis instar factus, ut ipsos Exprimat articulos, cujus deductior ante Pinnula procedit, pauloque reflexior exit, Et fugit in longum, tractumque inclinat acumen.
Calceorum de corduba Rostra tortitia, apud Guibertum lib. 1. de Vita sua.
Calcei ad aquilini Rostri speciem, apud Petrum Damian. lib. 5. Ep. 16.
Rostra, in Regula Templariorum cap. 29.
Sotulares rostrati vel cordellati,in Synodo Nemausensi ann. 1284.
Sotulares Rostratiinterdicuntur
Nec ocreis Rostratis quis utatur, in Statutis Monasterii S. Audoeni Rotomag. apud Marten. tom. 1. vett. Scriptorum part. 1. pag. 300. edit. ann. 1700.
Poulainia, et præterea Glossarium mediæ Græcitatis in
ROSTRAwas the name applied to a stage or platform at Rome, first between the Comitium and Forum, afterwards in the Forum, from which orators addressed the people [CONTIO]. This platform was originally called templum (Liv. 2.56; 3.17-Z2; 8.14-Z2), because it was consecrated by the augurs (Cic. in Vat. 10, 24) [TEMPLUM]; but it received the name of Rostra at the conclusion of the great Latin war, when C. Maenius adorned it with the beaks (rostra) of the ships taken from the Antiates (Liv. 8.14; Flor. 1.11; Plin. Nat.34.20). The Greeks also mutilated galleys in this way for the purpose of trophies: this was called by them ἀκρωτηριάζειν. [ACROTERIUM.]
From the mention of the volcanal as the speakers' platform in early times (Dionys. 6.67; 7.17-Z2; 11.39-Z2), some have inferred that the Rostra was not merely adorned with ships' beaks in the year B.C. 338, but was then first built; the fact, however, that the Twelve Tables were placed on the Rostra (Diod. 12.26) would lead us to conclude that it was an older structure which received this adornment and a new name in the 4th century. The language of Livy will bear either interpretation.
The Rostra lay, as has been said, between the Comitium, or place of meeting for the curies, and the Forum, or place of meeting for the whole people, so that the speaker might turn to the one or the other. No doubt the custom of turning towards the Comitium and addressing the curies from that spot originated in an age when that assembly was of importance alike in legislation and in judicial appeals, and it became a mark of democratic principles to turn the back on the Comitium and speak towards the Forum. According to Cicero (Lael. 25, 96), C. Licinius Crassus (tribune B.C. 145) first began in forum versus agere cum populo; a practice of which Plutarch makes C. Gracchus the originator (C. Gracch. 5). Julius Caesar transferred the position of the Rostra to the western side of the Forum (Cic. Phil. 9.2; Dio Cass.). A description of the Rostra will be found in Middleton, Rome, pp. 157-164, and in still greater detail in O. Richter's Gesch. der röm. Rednerbühne. It was reached by steps from the back, and was a rectangular platform, 78 feet long, 33 feet broad, and 11 feet above the pavement of the Forum, with end and side walls of tufa blocks; the upper floor was supported on travertine piers; along the front, facing the Forum, there were marble railings (cancelli), except in the centre, where the speaker stood (the marks of the railings being still apparent): in this central portion, which occupied one-fifth of the whole length, it is probable, as Richter thinks, that there was originally a lower stage, the locus inferior (see below), 5 1/2 feet beneath the level of the higher platform, or Rostra proper, and as many above the pavement of the Forum. At each end were colossal seated figures, as apparently was also the case in the older Rostra (cf. Cic. Phil. 9.2, 5). In the remains of the Rostra holes and metal pins may still be seen where the ships' beaks were fixed, 19 in the lower and 20 in the upper tier. A representation of the emperor speaking from the Rostra is given on the Arch of Constantine.
The rostra Julia, so called to distinguish them from the Rostra proper, formed the projecting podium of the Aedes Divi Juli, built by Augustus, on which were fixed the beaks of ships taken at Actium. The lower platform, or locus inferior, is traced by Richter alike in the Rostra and in the rostra Julia. In the latter it was a semicircular depression in the central portion, reaching back to half the width of the platform, and was at a later time filled up to the higher level: in the Rostra the depression was a square piece of the central portion reached by steps from above; but this also was filled and levelled up, so that on the Arch of Constantine the locus inferior does not appear at all, and in this later phase of the Rostra the entrance was by steps from the Forum instead of from the back. The distinction of Rostra and locus inferior seems to correspond with the distinction of place in the arrangement of the tribunal (see Mommsen, Staatsr. iii.3 p. xii.), and perhaps was primarily devised for the lower station of the appellant in a judicium populi [JUDICIUM]. As contrasted with the station of the magistrate, it was the place whence a privatus could speak in the suasio or discussion of a rogation. Though, however, men of magisterial rank might expect to speak from the Rostra, it was in the power of the superior magistrate who convened the assembly to order anyone to speak from the lower platform (ex inferiore loco), as did Caesar to Catulus, possibly by way of a studied slight to the optimates, while to Vettius on another occasion he gave the higher place (in rostra eum produxit, Cic. ad Att. 2.2. 4, 3; cf. Sueton. Jul. 15); and Papirius sent Fabius, as though he were an appellant and not a magistrate, into the lower platform (Liv. 8.33). In Cic. de Or. 3.6, 23, the contrast of ex inferiore loco, ex aequo, and ex superiore loco is not precisely to our point, because he is speaking there of three classes of orators, viz. pleaders in court, senators, and magistrates on the Rostra; but the Rostra with its locus inferior attached was adapted in principle for the first as well as the third of these classes. When the judicium populi passed away, this use, probably the original purpose, of the locus inferior ceased, and in process of time the Rostra was altered in structure, so as to have only one platform. (See on this point Mommsen, Staatsr. iii.3 383, and note on p. xii.: and, for the locality and construction of the Rostra, the writings of Middleton and O. Richter cited above; Nichols, Notizie dei Rostri.)
[W.S] [G.E.M](properly “the ships' prows,” from rostrum, the iron-bound prow [literally, “beak”] of a ship). The orators' platform in the Forum at Rome, so called because it was embellished with the bronze prows of the ships of the Latin fleet captured at Antium in B.C. 338 (Livy, viii. 14). Besides these it was also decorated with other monuments of the greatness of Rome, such as the Laws of the Twelve Tables, the columna rostrata (q.v.) of Duilius, and numerous statues of men of mark. Originally it stood between the part of the Forum called the Comitium and the Forum proper, opposite the Curia; but in B.C. 44 Caesar moved it to the north end of the Forum under the Capitol (Cic. Phil. ix. 2), and here built up part of it by the employment of the old materials. It was not completed until after his death, by Antonius. This new platform, which was afterwards repeatedly restored, appears by the existing remains to have consisted of an erection eleven feet higher than the pavement of the Forum, about seventy-eight feet in length, and thirty-three feet in depth. The front was decorated with two rows of ships' prows. The way up to the platform was at the back. This platform also was used down to the latest times of the Empire as a place for setting up honorary statues. The Rostra Iulia, so called to distinguish it from the other rostra, was the projecting podium of the Heroüm of Iulius Caesar, built by Augustus. Affixed to this were the prows of the vessels captured at Actium (Dio Cass. li. 19; Middleton, Ancient Rome, p. 179). See forum.