Secular Games

As a secular celebration is called a festival that marks the end of an old and the beginning of a new age. In ancient Rome, 249 BC and 146 BC Secular celebrations took place, according to later tradition, for example, but historically tangible sure this custom is only since Emperor Augustus, who had 17 BC hold with unprecedented pomp Secular Games. The origin of the celebrations is probably an atonement festival, which was taken over by the Etruscans. The focus was on the liberation of an accursed time. Should be celebrated whenever no one alive who has not experienced the final celebration. This will the people proclaimed by signs ( divinitus ). Augustus changed the character of the festival completely (possibly "invented" it, the celebration in the first place ). It was no longer thought of the past, but rather they celebrated the beginning of a new, happy time. Horace wrote this in his carmen saeculare: " seer Phoebus ( Apollo ) [ ... ] leads [ ... ] the Roman state and Lazio in a new Saeculum of happiness and always in better times ."

The Emperor Claudius committed a secular celebration with a correction of the Augustan calculation in the year 47 AD - while Augustus had assumed a 110 -year cycle since the fabled city was founded in 753 BC, to have an opportunity to celebrate, sat Claudius a Saeculum with 100 years of the same and therefore now was the 800 - year celebration of Rome commit. In the period following both cycles remained consistent, but were often not strictly followed. So Domitian had already celebrate 88 AD, although citing Augustus, but six years too early ( only 94 had been passed 110 years ). Particularly spectacular course came the celebration of the 1000th anniversary of the city of Rome in the year 247 under Emperor Philip the Arab. 313 was first on the holding potential secular celebrations (after the Augustan calculation) dispensed with, which is probably due to the Constantinian shift. Later pagan authors, such as Zosimus blamed the end of the secular celebrations for the downfall of the Empire.