SECULAR

See also:

• GAMES, CLASSICAL

GAMES (

See also:

• LODI

Lodi Saeculares, originally Terentini)  . These were celebrated at Rome for three days and nights to mark the commencement of a new saeculum or generation . It is important to note that there was a saeculum civile, the length of which was definitely fixed at Too years, and a saeculum naturale, which, under Greek and Etruscan influence, came to be accepted by the quindecimviri as 110 years . According to tradition, the secular games had their origin in certain sacrificial rites of the gens Valeria, which were performed at the Terentum, a volcanic cleft in the Campus Martius . According to the Roman antiquarians themselves, they were derived from the Etruscans, who, at the end of a mean period of too years (as representing the longest human life in a generation), presented to the chthonian deities an expiatory offering on behalf of the coming generation . The first definitely attested celebration of the games took place in 249 B.C., on which occasion a vow was made that they should be repeated every hundredth year (their name being also changed to Saeculares), a regulation which seems to have been immediately disregarded, for they were next held in 146 (not 149, although the authorities are not unanimous) ; in 49 the civil wars prevented any celebration . They would probably have fallen entirely into oblivion, had not Augustus revived them in 17 B.C., for which occasion the Carmen Saeculare was composed by Horace . In explanation of the selection of this year it is supposed that the quindecimviri invented celebrations for the years 456, 346, 236, 126, the saeculum being taken as lasting 110 years . In later times various modes of reckoning were adopted . The dates were: A.D . 47 (under Claudius), celebrating the 800th year of the foundation of the city; 88 (under Domitian), an interval of only 105 instead of no years; 147 (under Antoninus Pius), the 9ooth year of the city; 204 (under Septimius Severus), exactly two saecula (22o years) after the Augustan celebration; 248 (under Philip the Arabian), the l000th year of the city; 262 (under Gallienus), probably a special ceremony in time of calamity; in 304 (which should have been 314) Maximian intended to hold a celebration, but does not appear to have done so . From this time nothing more is heard of the secular games, until they were re. ived in the year 1300 as the popish jubilees instituted by Boniface VIII .

At the beginning of the

harvest, heralds went round and summoned the people to the festival . The quindecimviri distributed to all free citizens on the Capitol and in the temple of Apollo on the Palatine various means of expiation—torches, sulphur and bitumen . Here and in the temple of Diana on the Aventine, wheat, barley, and beans were distributed, to serve as an offering of firstfruits . The festival then began, at which offerings were made to various deities . On the first night the emperor sacrificed three rams to the Parcae at an underground altar on the banks of the Tiber, while the people lighted torches and sang a special hymn . On the same or following nights a black hog and a black pig were sacrificed to Tellus, and dark victims to Dis (Pluto) and Proserpine . On the first day white bulls and a white cow were offered to Jupiter and Juno on the Capitol, after which scenic games were held in honour of Apollo . On the second day noble matrons sang supplicatory hymns to Juno on the Capitol; on the third, white oxen were sacrificed to Apollo and twenty-seven boys and maidens sang the " secular hymn " in Greek and Latin . The above particulars are from Zosimus (ii . 5, and 6, which contain the Sibylline oracle), who, with Censorinus (De Die Natali, 17), Valerius Maximus, ii . 4, and Horace (Carmen Saeculare) is the chief ancient authority on the subject;, see also Mommsen, Romische Chronologie (1858) ; C . L .

Roth, Uber die romischen Sacularspiele " in the Rheinisches Museum, viii . (1853); and Marquardt, ROmische Staatsverwaitung, iii . (1885), p . 386 . The inscription commemorating the ludi of 17 inc. was discovered in 1890 and is printed in the Ephemeris epigraphica, vol. viii . The best account of the whole subject is in H . Diels, Sibyllinische Blatter (189o), p . 109 foil .