Tribunal
βῆμα
Tribunal (βῆμα), a raised platform, or, to use the term adopted from the French, tribune, on which the SELLA of the praetor or presiding magistrate was placed, when he sat to administer justice in any place which might be selected (Liv. 23.32). it is termed locus superior in Cic. Verr. 2.42, 102; 4.40, 85. It is described under BASILICA Vol. I. pp. 288, 291 (cf. Mommsen, Staatsrecht, i.3 400).
There was a tribunal in the camp, which was generally formed of turf, but sometimes, in a stationary camp, of stone, from which the general addressed the soldiers, and where the consul and tribunes of the soldiers administered justice. When the general addressed the army from the tribunal, the standards were planted in front of it, and the army placed round it in order. [ADLOCUTIO; CASTRA, Vol. I. p. 380.] For an instance of a tribunal raised in honour of a deceased imperator, see Tac. Ann. 2.83: for the theatrical tribunal, THEATRUM p. 821 b.
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.