beak was _rostrum_; in the plural, _rostra_. The pulpit was itself,
therefore, called the _Rostra_, that is, The Beaks; and the people were
addressed from it on great public occasions.[2] Caesar pronounced a
splendid panegyric upon the wife of Marius, at this her funeral, from
the Rostra, in the presence of a vast concourse of spectators, and he
had the boldness to bring out and display to the people certain
household images of Marius, which had been concealed from view ever
since his death. Producing them again on such an occasion was annulling,
so far as a public orator could do it, the sentence of condemnation
which Sylla and the patrician party had pronounced against him, and
bringing him forward again as entitled to public admiration and
applause. The patrician partisans who were present attempted to rebuke
this bold maneuver with expressions of disapprobation, but these
expressions were drowned in the loud and long-continued bursts of
applause with which the great mass of the assembled multitude hailed and
sanctioned it. The experiment was very bold and very hazardous, but it
was triumphantly successful.

[Footnote 2: In modern books this pulpit is sometimes called the
Rostrum, using the word in the singular.]

[Sidenote: Caesar's oration on his wife.]
[Sidenote: Alarm of the patricians.]

A short time after this Caesar had another opportunity for delivering a
funeral oration; it was in the case of his own wife, the daughter of
Cinna, who had been the colleague and coadjutor of Marius during the
days of his power. It was not usual to pronounce such panegyrics upon
Roman ladies unless they had attained to an advanced age. Caesar,
however, was disposed to make the case of his own wife an exception to