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• O maiores, quid diceretis de hac re?
• Oh ancestors, what would you say about this matter?
• Antony addresses Caesar's corpse immediately following the assassination in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar:
  
    O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
    That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
    Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
    That ever lived in the tide of times.
      - Shakespeare, Julius Caesar 3.1.254-257
  

Turning from one audience to another. Most often, apostrophe occurs when addressing an abstraction, an inanimate object, or to the absent.