Roman Civilization

CMS 206 /History 206

• July 6-13. During a particularly bad year in the Punic Wars (212 BCE), the Romans consulted the Sibylline Books and were advised to hold Games in honor of the Greek god, Apollo. The gods must have been pleased because four years later when a plague broke out, they decided to make the Ludi Apollinares permanent. Over the course of the next two centuries the Romans extended the length of the games until they came to last eight days. The principal sacrifice was always on the 13th of July. Two days of the festival were devoted to games in the Circus, the rest to theater productions.
  
  
• The first celebration of the Games was quite an affair. The treasury of Rome paid for an ox and cow and two white she-goats. They gilded the horns of all the animals. The decemviri sacris faciundis took care that the details of the Greek ritual were properly fulfilled. The audience, all of whom wore garlands, included married women, who offered prayers to Apollo. It seems that part of the celebration included a feast celebrated in front of the family house with the doors left open.
  
  
• Despite the often complained of July heat, these ludi were popular and on occasion, the site of political protest by ordinary citizens. Cicero regards with grim delight that in a theatrical performance of a play which included the line, "It's our misfortune that you are great," the audience infered a reference to Pompey the Great and applauded like mad. One attraction of these games (as well as the Ludi Romani and Ludi Plebeii) was the mercatus (market or fair) held for six days following the conclusion of the games. Because July was the time to harvest barley and beans, farmers who lived outside the city could come to Rome for the ludi, sell their goods at the mercatus and in some years, attend the Test of the Roman Equites held on July 15.
  
  
• Romans believed that the gods Castor and Pollux had come to their aid at the battle of Lake Regillus in 496 BCE where the conquered the Latins. After the battle, the gods brought their horses down to the Forum to give them water. The Censor Q. Fabius Rullianus in 304 BCE decided to establish a cavalry parade to honor them. Originally the parade was held annually, but over time came only to be celebrated every fifth year when the censors held the census of the Equites. The Roman knights rode from the temple of Mars on the Campus Martius through the city to the Forum, ending at the temple of Castor and Pollux in the Forum where the censors were seated. The knights rode in their centuries as if coming from battle. But they wore crowns made of olive branchs and purple robes striped with red. If they had received decorations during their military career they wore those too. At the temple, each knight advance to the Censors, who then decided if the the gentleman in question qualified to remain an equite (which is why the Romans called it a probatio - test, and not a parade). By the end of the Republic the the Romans had stopped holding the probatio. Augustus, however, restored it. According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, it was a great show.