Fergus Millar has rightly lamented that modern students of Republican politics have been “deaf both to the voice of the orator and to the reactions of the crowd.” As everyone knew who climbed the Rostra and confronted the sea of faces across the Forum and around the surrounding temples, the Roman People itself had a voice – a loud and sometimes terrifying one. When a tribune who opposed A. Gabinius' law creating a special command against the pirates for Pompey was unable to speak above the noise of the multitude, and thus tried to indicate with his fingers that two commanders should be chosen instead of one, the crowd let loose a shout that – according to Plutarch and Dio – knocked a crow out of the sky “as if struck by lightning.” Falling crows are a topos in such narratives, but we may still conclude that a source common to both writers was trying to say that the roar was stunning. Sallust describes the reaction of a different crowd to an unpopular use of a tribunician veto: “the crowd that was present in the meeting was violently agitated and tried to intimidate him with its shouting, its expression, indeed with frequent rushes at him, and every other sort of action that anger tends to incite.” Communication in the contio, then, worked both ways, a point that has not hitherto been accorded its due significance.