Augustus Revives an Old Rite

The best documented celebration of the Ludi Saeculares took place in 17 BCE, staged by Augustus at a moment when he had strong political reasons to present his rule as the opening of a renewed, prosperous age for Rome after decades of civil war. Augustus' own commission of quindecimviri, the priestly board responsible for the Sibylline Books, recalculated the timing to justify holding the games then, a piece of religious-calendrical adjustment that ancient and modern historians alike treat as at least partly convenient to Augustus' political program, whatever genuine antiquarian basis it also carried.

The 17 BCE games were commemorated on inscribed stone records, the acta of the Secular Games, that survive in fragments and give modern historians an unusually detailed procedural account of a Roman state religious festival, naming the sacrifices, their order, and the officiants involved. A specially composed hymn was performed by choirs of freeborn boys and girls as part of the celebration, tying the festival's message of renewal directly to the youngest citizens present, the generation Augustus was implicitly promising a secure and prosperous saeculum of their own.