Rostra and Comitium: The Center of the Center
In a recent book, E. V. Walter has described the various aspects of place in the following way:
The concept of expressive space means the subjective dimension of located experience. Expressive reality refers to what people feel and think and imagine, just as perceptual reality signifies things they perceive, and cognitive reality, things they understand. A place is a concrete milieu and an expressive universe within specific social and physical boundaries, with a location in physical space and time and an identity.[34]
There are many indications that, for the Romans, Rome was an "expressive universe" of extraordinary richness. The physical environment of the city in Cicero's day constituted then, as now, a nexus between present and past, and, to the Roman, the past was of inestimable importance. "Not to know what happened before you were born is always to remain a child. For what is a person's life if it is not woven into the lives of those who came before by the memory of things past?" Cicero writes in the Orator .[35] Roman religious ritual lovingly preserved in incomprehensible detail antique words and actions; noble Roman houses were adorned with the realistic busts of the dead, who thereby commanded the daily notice of the living; and Roman history was an almost unbroken sigh of regret for the men and institutions that had gone before. The stimuli that sparked the remembrance of the past were, in large part, the statues, temples, graves, altars, and countless other monuments that graced the city, each carrying its story and its special significance.
This quality of historical allusiveness connected with places and monuments is perhaps best illustrated by Vergil's depiction of Aeneas's visit to Rome in the eighth book of the Aeneid, where even in the settlement of that archaic time the hero continually finds himself discovering some vestige of a lost past. Vergil, from the perspective of the first century B.C. , looks on the Forum Boarium, the Capitoline, the Roman Forum, and the Palatine of Augustan Rome and creates in these places the image of the proto-Rome of Aeneas's host, King Evander. But the poet's imagination carries him back still farther, for Evander recalls for his guest the story of Hercules' visit and his battle with the monster
Cacus on the Palatine. The ruined walls of the Capitoline lead the king to speak of an even more distant Golden Age, when Saturn himself had ruled from the Capitolium. Nor, according to Evander, was Saturn the first inhabitant of the place, for he had found on the site of Rome a rough and uncultivated society of rustics and shepherds, people sprung from the trunks of trees, whom the god had civilized and to whom he had given laws.[36]
There was perhaps no place in ancient Rome more intricate and multilayered in terms of its "expressive energy" than the place from which Cicero delivered the third Catilinarian . Unlike the modern city, stretching out before the Victor Emmanuel monument, or the medieval city, huddled beside the curve in the Tiber, or even the imperial city, which proceeded north in the great measured steps of the imperial fora, Republican Rome faced south from the Capitoline, towards the Forum Romanum, the gathering place of the crowded city, the great drawing room of Rome. The Comitium-Rostra complex, in turn, constituted the nerve center of the Forum valley. Here was the scene of political rallies, voting assemblies, judicial business, social intercourse, and, not infrequently, sectarian violence. Here religious rituals were enacted and omens reported, ambassadors were received, funeral laudations pronounced. From this place news of war and peace and of other great events affecting the state was announced to the people. From here the very times of the day had been marked.[37] Dionysius of Halicarnassus, referring to the area of the Rostra and the adjoining Lapis Niger, termed it "the chief part of the Forum"; while Pliny the Elder called the Rostra
"the most visible place" in the city.[38] Before discussing in more detail the subjective aspects of this place for Cicero's audience, we will review first its architecture and topography.
The Rostra and Comitium of Cicero's day would have reflected a series of architectural changes extending back to the earliest days of Rome. Although the Comitium was eventually transformed into a circular area bounded by a platform that was mounted by steps from within, the earliest form of the monument (which Coarelli dates to the beginning of the sixth century B.C. ) was probably a square, marked out by palings and extending symmetrically in front of the archaic Curia Hostilia.[39] The hypothesis that the archaic Comitium took this form arises both from archaeological data and from evidence that, from the earliest period, the Comitium was a templum, a square marked out by the augur and—at least in the case of the first Curia and Comitium—inaugurated with reference to the cardinal points of the compass.[40] The
first speaker's platform, created in approximately 500 B.C. and associated with the foundation of the Republic, stood almost directly south of the Curia, across the space of the Comitium. It also was rectilinear in shape and oriented on a north-south, east-west axis. In the fourth century the Comitium was enlarged, and in 338 B.C. the speaker's platform received the ship beaks (rostra ) captured by Maenius in the naval victory against the Antiates that gave it its name.[41] The area was completely rebuilt in the third century B.C. , when the Comitium took the circular shape it retained until the transformation of the entire northern end of the Forum by Julius Caesar. The Rostra, perhaps 12 Roman feet (3.5 m) in height, would have formed a segment within the southern arc of the circular platform of the Republican Comitium.[42]
In a passage from the De finibus (5.2), part of which was quoted in chapter 1 of this study, Marcus Piso speaks with nostalgia of the Curia Hostilia as it existed before 80 B.C. Cicero's audience at the time of the Catilinarian conspiracy would, like Piso, have carried in their minds two images of the area where they were assembled, that of the present and that which existed before the many changes in the Forum wrought by Sulla.[43] The Curia Hostilia (after this period sometimes called the Curia Cornelia) had been enlarged to accommodate the new senators added by the dictator. This enlargement, in turn, resulted in the truncation of part of the circle of the Comitium. The Comitium of Cicero's day, then, was a relatively restricted space that stood in the northeast corner of the Forum valley, in roughly the area that now extends between the Curia Julia on the east, the Arch of Septimius Severus on the west, the church of SS. Luca e Martina on the north, and the Sacra Via on the south.
The Sullan building program resulted not only in the shrinking of the space of the Comitium but also in the displacement of statues and the covering over of certain shrines by the new pavement. The statues of
Fig. 3.
Rostra, Curia, and Comitium.
A. Reconstruction of the Rostra. Adjacent to the Rostra and shown with aediculum
and pair of lions is the area of the Lapis Niger, the site of a shrine thought to mark
the heroon of Romulus. (From Gjerstad, "Il Comizio romano," 143.)
B. Reconstruction of the area of the Curia and the Comitium prior to changes made
by L. Cornelius Sulla (81–79 B.C. ). The plan shows the hypothetical positions of the
praetorian tribunals and the Rostra. (Adapted from Coarelli, Il Foro Romano, 2.23.)
C. Schematic plan of the relationship of Sulla's new Curia (Curia Cornelia) to the
older Curia Hostilia, with hypotheses regarding the locations of the following monuments:
(1) statue of Attus Navius; (2) Ruminal fig tree; (3) wolf; (4) statue of Marsyas; (5) puteal
(wellhead); (6) Maenian column; (7) statue of Pythagoras; (8) statue of Alcibiades; (9) tabula
Valeria; (10) bench of the tribune of the people. (Adapted from Coarelli, Il Foro Romano, 2:120.)
Pythagoras and Alcibiades that had stood in cornibus comitii ("on the 'horns' of the Comitium") were at this time removed,[44] while the site of the shrine to Stata Mater was paved over, necessitating the transfer of the cult from the Forum to the city neighborhoods.[45] The Sullan era architects were faced with a problem when contemplating the renovation of the space between the Rostra and the Graecostasis, which for centuries had been the site of an altar, a cone-shaped monument, and a cippus with an archaic inscription thought to date to the sixth century B.C.[46] This area was evidently of such sanctity that its shrine could not simply be secularized or moved; it therefore remained a sacred area, probably covered at this time by the black stone paving known as the Lapis Niger.
Not only was the front of the Rostra (that is, the side facing the Forum) adorned with the beaks from Maenius's naval victory, but the Rostra and the Comitium supported a bewildering number of other monuments and statues. We read, for instance, that a rostrated column dedicated to Maenius stood between the Comitium and the Carcer (Prison), and another such column in the Comitium held a statue of Gaius Duilius, the first Roman to win a naval victory over Carthage, in 260 B.C. ;[47] that statues of Horatius Cocles, Hostus Hostilius, and Hermodorus of Ephesus also stood in the Comitium;[48] that a bronze aedi-
cula to Concordia adorned the Graecostasis and that statues of Pythagoras and Alcibiades stood in cornibus comitii (all three of which were displaced by the Sullan building program);[49] and that a wellhead in the Comitium marked the place where the miraculous razor and whetstone of Attus Navius, an augur during the monarchy of Tarquinius Priscus, were buried.[50] A statue of this same Navius stood before the Curia until both Curia and statue were destroyed in the funeral pyre for Clodius in 52 B.C.[51] The fig tree of Attus Navius, enclosed by a bronze fence, grew in the Comitium, as did a cypress that was thought to be coeval with the city.[52] In the Volcanal, adjacent to the Comitium, grew a lotus tree, and here was said to have been a bronze statue of Romulus with quadriga.[53]
On or near the Rostra itself stood statues of Camillus (in rostris ) and of the satyr Marsyas, symbol of plebeian libertas; statues of Hercules and of three Sibyls were said to be iuxta rostra,[54] and either a single stone lion or a pair of lions stood next to the Rostra above the monuments of the Lapis Niger.[55] The Rostra also held statues of ambassadors who had been killed in the service of the state, including the four ambassadors treacherously killed at Fidenae in 434 B.C. and Gnaeus Octavius, who also died while on an embassy.[56]
The audience facing the Rostra would have seen the speaker, then, flanked by such statues and monuments and against the backdrop of the enlarged Curia of Sulla. To the east stood the Basilica Aemilia; to the west, behind Sulla's Tabularium, rose the twin heights of the Capitoline Hill: the Capitolium, which included the sacred precinct of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, and the Arx, the most prominent building of which was the Temple of Juno Moneta.[57] At the time of the third Catilinarian,
the numbers of those who gathered in the Forum to hear the consul would have been huge. They would have filled the open spaces in front of the Rostra and crowded the porches of the temples. Describing a similar scene in the fourth Catilinarian, Cicero declared to the senators gathered in the Temple of Concord: "Everyone is present, men of all orders, all classes, all ages. The Forum is full, the temples around the Forum are full, all the entrances and grounds of this temple are full" (14).
We now take up a question more important to our purposes than any involving the physical aspects of the Rostra-Comitium—namely, What was the meaning of this place for Cicero's audience? To answer this question we must discuss some of the separate strains that contributed to the perception of this complex space; but, in so doing, it should be kept in mind that a Roman of Cicero's day would not have been accustomed to thinking in terms of discrete divisions between, for instance, the "political," the "historical," and the "religious." As has often been pointed out, these concepts—which we are accustomed to rationalize into distinct aspects of experience—were overlapping and interwoven in the Roman consciousness.
A great number of the activities that went on in the Comitium and on the Rostra during the many centuries of their existence were judicial in nature.[58] The high platform surrounding the floor of the Comitium had long been the site of the tribunal of the urban praetor and of the praetor peregrinus as well. Here were the benches of the tribunes, who were ready to use their power to protect from summary judgment those who appealed to them. The tribunal of the Rostra had also been used as
a court of final appeal: the tribal assembly was summoned here in order to hear the arguments of defense and prosecution and then to decide by their votes the guilt or innocence of the accused.[59] In spite of the transfer in the second and first centuries of some of the judicial functions once carried on in the area, the Rostra-Comitium area continued to be a focus of many of the activities surrounding litigation. Several of the standing courts would have been set up in or near the Comitium, and, even after the judicial comitia no longer voted in the Comitium, the public meetings or contiones that preceded the voting continued to be convened at the Rostra.[60] It is also to be remembered that many of the judges and jurors who sat at the tribunals of the permanent quaestiones were the same men who gathered in the Curia. The area of the Comitium and that near the Rostra must have been continually alive with the legal hubbub produced by praetors and judges, defense lawyers and prosecutors, mourning-clad defendants soliciting sympathy and support, accusers and their adherents, witnesses, lictors, and scribes. Surely, then, one of the more important meanings attached to the Comitium in general and the Rostra in particular for Cicero's audience would have stemmed from its function as a locus iustitiae .
As its name shows, the Comitium had originally been the chief meeting place of the voting assemblies of the people. In the early days of the Republic both the Comitia Curiata and the Comitia Tributa used the enclosed space of the Comitium to vote on certain magisterial candidates and on legislative and judicial proceedings. The Comitia Curiata
continued to meet here, although by the late Republic its functions had withered to the purely formal, and the members of the Curiae no longer met individually but were represented by thirty lictors. In the second century B.C. , lack of space forced the tribal assemblies to abandon the Comitium and instead to assemble to cast their votes in the open area on the Forum side of the Rostra. The Rostra continued to serve until the end of the Republic, however, as the chief platform for directing the voting of these assemblies.[61] All that was required by the change from Comitium to Forum was that the magistrate overseeing the proceedings would have turned to face the Forum rather than the Curia.[62] When a vote was taken, the tribes would then have filed up, either to the Rostra or, perhaps, to a slightly lower wooden structure attached to the Rostra, in order to record their decisions.
The fact that the voting assemblies once met in the Comitium leads us to consider another aspect of this space. In archaic Rome all "political" actions required divine sanction. For this reason the magistrates were strictly bound by religious constraints governing the time and place of assemblies (which could be held only between sunrise and sunset and had to be convened within a templum ) and were required to take the auspices to determine the will of the gods before convening such comitia .[63] The use of the Comitium and of the Rostra, then, as settings for the conduct of state business was intimately tied to their sacral character, for the status of these spaces as inaugurated templa guaranteed divine approval and protection of the political activities that went on there.[64] The Comitium was also the scene of a number of religious rites and ceremonies whose roots went back to archaic Rome: the Salian priests danced in the Comitium on March 19 (the Armilustrium) during the purification of the sacred shields; here the rex sacrorum enacted the
rites of the Regifugium; and, according to R. E. A. Palmer, the Comitium was also the scene of the ritual combat between inhabitants of the neighborhoods of the Sacra Via and of the Subura that was connected with the celebration of the October Horse.[65] The perceived sanctity of the place was further reinforced by the presence of the Volcanal and, immediately next to the Rostra, of the sacred area of the Lapis Niger under which was thought to be the heroon of Romulus (or, according to some sources, the grave of the shepherd Faustulus or of Hostus Hostilius).[66] As noted, the refusal on the part of the Sullan era architects to secularize or transfer the sanctuary must have stemmed from a belief in its special holiness and inviolability.[67]
This space was also sanctified in the Roman mind by tradition, for here had been enacted momentous events in the history of the state. Some of these would have been summoned to mind by the statues that crowded upon the platform, but many links between this place and the past found their memorials only in the stories and legends learned by
The Comitium was also the place of judgment and punishment of certain offenses that involved religious pollution (see Palmer, The King and the Comitium ). Livy, for instance, recounts how a man who had been convicted of adultery with a Vestal had been scourged to death in the Comitium. The choice of the Comitium as the place for such punishments was probably not because of its proximity to the Carcer (although the scourging of lower-class criminals took place nearby at the Maenian column); rather, because certain crimes were thought to pollute the city and to alienate the gods, the criminal was considered sacer, or one whose punishment was devoted to the god as atonement. The consecrated space of the Comitium was therefore an appropriate setting for what was in essence a sacrificial offering. The same reasoning applies to the earlier practice of staging gladiatorial games within the Comitium, for originally the participants in such games were probably considered sacred offerings. See Livy 22.57.3 (scourging of adulterer), 24.20.6 (execution of deserters), 25.7.14 (scourging of hostages), 27.36.8 (gladiatorial show); Per. 55 (deserters scourged to death in Comitium).
generations of Romans. While a detailed knowledge of history would have been the possession only of the few, certain events were surely known by all. Those that looked on the Curia Hostilia knew how the tyrant Tarquin had cruelly thrown the rightful king, Tullus Hostilius, down its steps. They would have heard of the struggles that took place at the Rostra between Marcus Manlius Capitolinus and the dictator Cornelius Cossus, or between the dictator L. Papirius Cursor and his master of the horse, Q. Fabius Maximus Rullianus.[68] Here the great Scipio Africanus, conqueror of Hannibal, had defended himself against the charges of the Papirii, then retired to the temples on the Capitoline, followed by the entire crowd that had witnessed his speech.[69] Of more recent and sinister memory were the scenes acted out here during and subsequent to the turbulent tribuneships of the Gracchi. It is reported that during the period of the civil wars Marius and Cinna had begun the gruesome tradition of displaying the heads of their victims on the Rostra, a practice adopted by Sulla a few years later. (On Caesar's Rostra, the head and hands of the murdered Cicero would be displayed by Antony in 43 B.C. ) Sulla had probably used the Rostra to post the lists of the proscribed and here he had presided over the auctioning of their goods.[70] The place, then, would have inspired both the horror associated with the violence of the recent past and the unique and quasi-religious reverence felt by the Romans for the distant past.
The place from which Cicero delivered the third Catilinarian constituted the point of topographical intersection between the Curia and Comitium, on one hand, and the Forum, on the other. It was, therefore, in a political, social, and psychological sense, the focal point of interaction between the principes, who met in the Senate and Comitium, and the populus, who assembled in the Forum proper. While in the early Republic the Rostra would have been primarily the locus from which the magistrates of the state commanded, directed, informed, bullied, or appeased the populace, by the second century B.C. the initiative had shifted, and the Rostra became the principal scene of tribunician challenges to the status quo. Here reformers and demagogues such as the Gracchi, Saturninus, and Glaucia had questioned senatorial competence and authority and had even succeeded at times in transferring to popu-
lar vote questions of policy long kept strictly within senatorial control. This significant change in the public interaction between Senate and people was symbolized by the story that Gaius Gracchus had been the first orator to turn his back on the Curia and the senators assembled in the Comitium in order to face the masses gathered in the Forum.[71] Whether the anecdote is true or merely ben trovato, it marks the transformation of the Rostra into a locus popularis . Henceforth, even young nobles (at least in the early stages of their careers) might be expected to make popular noises in their speeches here.[72] Cicero, in his first consular speech delivered from the Rostra, felt compelled to couch his objections to an agrarian bill in the rhetoric of the opposition: he argued that the true interests of the people rested in continuing prosperity, stability, and peace and that he—as legally, even divinely, appointed guardian of these blessings—was truly a consul popularis .[73]
If the scene of the first Catilinarian was particularly evocative to the senators who heard the speech of the glorious legends of Romulean Rome, the scene of the third Catilinarian was surely inhabited by the genius of Republican Rome. The Rostra was in symbol and in reality the center of the postmonarchical state, and if Romulus was evoked here, it was in the guise of the deified founder Quirinus, whose heroon stood beside the speaker's platform.[74] In this place, consecrated by religion and history, a magistrate of the late Republic could no longer depend on respect for his auctoritas to bend the masses to his desires, for the demagogues of the late Republic had accustomed their audiences to expect the orators who addressed them here to define all issues in terms of the libertarian catchwords and slogans of the day. In the best of times, the best of orators might successfully induce his audience to equate their own interests with the welfare of the state; in the worst of times, all persuasion yielded to violence. It was to be expected, then, that a Ciceronian speech delivered from the Rostra before an assembly of the people would be markedly different from one delivered before the Sen-
ate, and that the "popular" content and themes of such an oration might be supported by the rhetorical exploitation of this ambiance.