The Field of Mars was an immense parade ground, reserved for military reviews, spectacles, and shows.

A funeral pile was erected here for the burning of the body There was to be a funeral discourse pronounced, and Marc Antony had been designated to perform this duty.
The body had been placed in a gilded bed, under a magnificent canopy in the form of a temple, before the rostra where the funeral discourse was to be pronounced.

The bed was covered with scarlet and cloth of gold and at the head of it was laid the robe in which Caesar had been slain.

It was stained with blood, and pierced with the holes that the swords and daggers of the conspirators had made.
[Sidenote: Marc Antony's oration.] [Sidenote: The funeral pile.] Marc Antony, instead of pronouncing a formal panegyric upon his deceased friend, ordered a crier to read the decrees of the Senate, in which all honors, human and divine, had been ascribed to Caesar.

He then added a few words of his own.