Rostra

The Rostra dates back to the 4th-3rd centuries BCE, during the middle Republican period. This platform shaped structure was used by orators when they needed to speak to those assembled in the Forum square. The name rostra derives from the Latin word rostrum, which “signifies first the beak of a bird, then the sharp bronze rams which were fixed on the prow to pierce the enemy’s ships, and finally the tribunes of the orators on which these spoils of war were fixed” (Watkin, 14). 

The Anaglypha traiani was found in 1872 in front of the rostra, though questions about the original placement of this anaglypha are hard to find the definitive answer to. A majority of scholars do believe that it acted as a railing for the rostra due to the historical reliefs present on it; however, this does not explain the significance of the other side, which depicts a suovetaurila ritual (process of sacrificial bull, ram, and boar). The left side of this bas relief shows an emperor standing on a platform, perhaps the rostra, speaking to a crowd of people raising their hands in approval. On the middle/right side of the relief shows a woman—theorized to be the personification of Italy—offering her child to the seated emperor. Thus, its composition suggested that this part of the relief most likely commemorates emperor Trajan’s program of food relief for children of the poor called alimenta because of its striking resemblance to an ancient coin that celebrates that same program. On the very right side of the relief, there is a fig tree (Ficus Ruminalis) with a statue of Marsyas carrying wineskin over his shoulder under it.

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Sources: 

  1. Watkin, David. Roman Forum. Cambridge, Harvard Univ Press, 2012., pp. 14-16.
  2. Thill, Elizabeth Wolfram. “Dispatches from the Home Front: The Anaglypha Panels in Rome.” Britannia, vol. 53, 1 Nov. 2022, pp. 5–30, www.cambridge.org/core/journals/britannia/article/dispatches-from-the-home-front-the-anaglypha-panels-in-rome/53AC888CBC28D24443740371AD1AE34F, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068113X22000198. Accessed 29 Apr. 2024. 
  3. Hammond, Mason. “A Statue of Trajan Represented on the “Anaglypha Traiani.”” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, vol. 21, 1953, p. 125, https://doi.org/10.2307/4238631. Accessed 14 May 2021.
Rostra