His greatest contribution to poetic art consisted in the perfection which he attained in the phalaecian, the pure iambic, and the scazon metres, and in the ease and grace with which he used the language of familiar intercourse, as distinct from that of the creative imagination, of the rostra, and of the schools, to give at once a lifelike and an artistic expression to his feelings.
In the early ages of Rome, and even down to the middle of the 5th century after the foundation of the city, no other divisions of the day were known than sunrise, sunset, and midday, which was marked by the arrival of the sun between the Rostra and a place called Graecostasis, where ambassadors from Greece and other countries used to stand.
He was accorded a public funeral, and a statue was erected to his memory in front of the Rostra.
Antium is named with Ardea, Laurentum and Circeii, as under Roman protection, in the treaty with Carthage in 34 8 B.C. In 341 it lost its independence after a rising with the rest of Latium against Rome, and the beaks (rostra) of the six captured Antiatine ships decorated and gave their name to the orators' tribunal in the Roman Forum.
His head and hands were sent to Rome and nailed to the rostra, after Fulvia, wife of Antony and widow of Clodius, had thrust a hairpin through the tongue.