Fulvia symbolises the antithesis of the Roman matron, who abandoned the tasks that were socially assigned to women, acting as a ruler and even recruiting legions. She must have used the forum's speaker's rostrum, on different occasions, to criticise her opponents or to draw favour with her husbands' supporters.  
 
Answer the questions:
 
a.-Find information about the Roman forum, in which part of the city it was located and what the people who visited it did there.  

b.-Look at the image below. Here you have the location of the buildings that made up the forum of a city. Find out what was done in the basilica, in the curia and especially what the rostrum or tribune of orators was. What does rostra mean? Who was an orator in Ancient Rome?

Adapted from Macaulay, David (1978): El nacimiento de una ciudad romana. Barcelona, Editorial Timun Mas. 

c.-Think of the main square of a town or city. What do people do there? What differences and similarities do you think exist between the Roman forum and the public squares of today's cities and towns?

d.-Before reading the text below, look up for information on Wikipedia about the characters mentioned in it: Marcus Tullius Cicero, Mark Antony (the triumvir) and Fulvia.

And when Cicero's head was sent to them (for when he fled he was seized and beheaded), Antony, after addressing many unpleasant expletives to him, ordered it to be placed in a conspicuous place, more visible than the others, in the tribune of orators, there from where he had uttered so many sophistries against him, and there it could be seen together with his right hand, which had been amputated, and Fulvia took the head in her hands, before it was taken away, and, enraged with it and spitting at him, placed it on her knees, and opening her mouth, tore out her tongue and pierced it with the hairpins she used for her hair, while she taunted him with many cruel infamies.

Cassius Dio: Roman History, BCG-393. Our own translation from Juan Pedro Oliver Segura (p. 80).

e.-Can you now explain why his enemies ordered Cicero's head and hand to be placed on the tribune of the forum and why Fulvia tore his tongue out?