the _percussio laterum_; if a man, standing on a small platform, were to do this often, he would become ridiculous. At Athens, the case was different; the orators there did not move about so much, and the βῆμα seems to have been smaller; I have not indeed found any passage about it in the ancients, but I infer it from the locality; and according to the descriptions we have of it, it seems that it could not have been otherwise. Upon the rostra, at Rome, the statues stood _in loco aprico et conspicuo_. In the most ancient language, this platform was called _templum_, and the new name arose in 417, from the beaks of the ships, with which the front was adorned. I have often been on that spot, and often stood in the Roman Forum: who will describe the emotions that rise in one’s breast on a spot where Tiberius spoke upon Augustus, and other relations upon Germanicus (for these rostra are not the most ancient), where all the funeral orations upon the emperors were delivered, and where all great solemnities took place! And how wretched, how bare, and how stripped is that spot of all its splendour! Before you, you have Rome and its most ancient monuments, the career of Ancus Marcius; on the other side, the place once occupied by the temple of Concord, which Camillus built after having appeased the plebs: the lacus Servilius, where in the days of Sulla the heads of the proscribed were stuck up; the site of the temples of Castor and Vesta, and the Capitoline district: to such a place one can always return with a feeling of reverence; there one may imbibe the inspiration for writing the history of ancient times, and there one becomes familiar with it. The most ancient rostra were, no doubt, constructed of peperino. According to Plutarch, C. Gracchus transferred the real sovereignty to the people, by turning towards the Forum and the commonalty, instead of facing the Comitium where the patricians and the senate stood. Until then it had been customary for the orator, even when communicating something to the plebeians, to turn towards the patricians: but Gracchus turned round, and thus symbolically threw off the mask which he had worn until then. The present level of the Forum is about twenty-five or twenty-six feet higher than in ancient times.