Download Castano Saecular Games

Saecular Games of
17 BCE
By: Dominique Castano
The Original Saecular Games
• Celebrations that were held to mark the end of a saeculum
and beginning of a new one.
• Held for three days and three nights.
• Involved sacrifices and theatrical performances.
• The Saecular Games started with a Sabine man called Valesius.
• They began when Valesius prayed for a cure for his children's
illness and was supernaturally ordered to sacrifice on the
Campus Martius to Dis Pater and Proserpina, deities of the
underworld.
• The only clearly proven celebrations under the Roman
Republic took place in 249 and in the 140s BC.
• Celebrations of the Games under the Roman Republic are
poorly documented.
Augustus
• messengers went around the city and invited the people to
witness the games
• Torches, sulphur and asphalt were handed out to the citizens
of Rome. These were to be burned as a means of purification.
• There were also offerings of wheat,
barley, and beans that were made.
• daytime sacrifices.
• held on the Capitoline and Palatine hills.
• nighttime sacrifices, but they were made to the
• Moerae (fates)
• Ilythiae (goddesses of childbirth)
• Terra Mater (the "Earth mother”)
• Each sacrifice was followed by theatrical performances
• The Senate ruled that a written record of the Games should be
set up in the Tarentum, a site in the Campus Martius. This
written record has survived, and provides information about
the ceremonies.
The Later Games
• Later emperors held the Saecular Games after Augustus.
• They were held in the years of 88 and 204 AD, which were
about 110 years apart.
• The Games were abandoned under later Christian emperors.