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Taurian Games

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The Taurian Games (Latin Ludi Taurii or Ludi Taurei, rarely Taurilia[1]) were games (ludi) held in ancient Rome in honor of the di inferi, the gods of the underworld. They were not part of a regularly scheduled religious festival on the calendar, but were held as expiatory rites religionis causa, occasioned by religious concerns.[2]

Ludi Taurii are recorded in 186 BC as a two-day event.[3] Varro mentions them as occurring in the late Republic.[4] During the reign of Antoninus Pius, they were held every five years from 140 to 160 AD, within a period beginning on the day after the Ides of May and continuing through the Kalends of June.[5] Some scholars extrapolate that like the lustrum (purification ritual), the Ludi Taurii were regularly quinquennial.[6] Others caution that the five-year schedule under Antoninus Pius, attested by the Fasti Ostienses, is never mentioned in other sources. The limited evidence suggests the Ludi Taurii were important mainly in the context of religious revivalism during the Augustan and Antonine eras.[7]

The Taurian Games were horse races, or less likely chariot races, on a course around turning posts (metae).[8] In the 19th century, they were sometimes confused with the archaic Tarentine Games (ludi tarentini), which were replaced by the Saecular Games.[9] Horse racing along with the propitiation of underworld gods was characteristic of "old and obscure" Roman festivals such as the Consualia, the October Horse, and sites in the Campus Martius such as the Tarentum (where the ludi tarentini originated) and the Trigarium.[10] The Ludi Taurii were the only games held in the Circus Flaminius.[11]

If the games are Etruscan in origin, as Festus and Servius claim, taurii probably comes from the Etruscan word tauru, "tomb."[12] The design of the turning posts (metae) on a Roman race course was derived from Etruscan funerary monuments.[13] Festus, however, offers an etiology based on Latin taurus, "bull."[14]

  1. ^ Taurilia is an alternate reading of the relevant passage in Livy, 39.22; it is included as an entry in Forcellini's Totius Latinitatis Lexicon (1828), p. 708, and appears in some older editions of Livy and in scholarship from the 19th century. See notes in the 1825 edition of Livy by Arnold Drakenborch and Johann Freinsheim, p. 402.
  2. ^ John H. Humphrey, Roman Circuses: Arenas for Chariot Racing (University of California Press, 1986), p. 543; Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome (Edinburgh University Press, 2000), p. 82.
  3. ^ Livy, 39.22.
  4. ^ Varro, De lingua latina 5.154.
  5. ^ CIL xiv supp. 4541 (the Fasti Ostienses); John Briscoe, A Commentary on Livy, Books 38–40 (Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 19, 294; Humphrey, Roman Circuses, p. 544.
  6. ^ Eckart Köhne, "Bread and Circuses: The Politics of Entertainment," in Gladiators and Caesars: The Power of Spectacle in Ancient Rome (University of California Press, 2000), p. 9; Humphrey, Roman Circuses, p. 543.
  7. ^ Briscoe, A Commentary on Livy, p. 294; Humphrey, Roman Circuses, pp. 543–544.
  8. ^ Humphrey, Roman Circuses, p. 544; Varro, De lingua latina 5.154: "the horses run around the turning posts" (equi circum metas currunt).
  9. ^ In 1875 and subsequent editions, Leonhard Schmitz's entry on the Ludi Saeculares in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (SMIGRA) identified the Taurian Games with the ludi tarentini. The identification gained currency in English classicizing literary circles, as indicated in the notes to Edward Lytton's translation of Horace's Saecular Ode, published in Schiller and Horace (Routledge, 1875), pp. 423–424, citing a then-current edition of Smith's Dictionary. By the 1890 edition of SMIGRA, a separate entry for Ludi Taurii Archived 2012-07-09 at archive.today had been added, with a few points of dubious factuality (see Bill Thayer's note to the entry Ludi Saeculares in the LacusCurtius edition of the 1875 SMIGRA, as well as his translation of and note to the entry Taurii Ludi in Daremberg and Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et Romaines). The erroneous identification was nevertheless perpetuated in the Century Dictionary of 1891 (pp. 6189, 6199) and later editions. As early as 1701, however, Thomas Dempster had pointed out in his notes to the Antiquitatum Romanorum Corpus Absolutissimum of Johannes Rosinus that "many confuse the Taurian with the Saecular games, but they are in error: [the two] are entirely different" (p. 340). Ludwig Preller recognized the similarities, but suggested that the ludi taurii were performed irregularly when the Saecular Games would have been untimely; Römische Mythologie (1881), vol. 1, p. 92.
  10. ^ Humphrey, Roman Circuses, pp. 544, 558; Auguste Bouché-Leclercq, Manuel des Institutions Romaines (Hachette, 1886), p. 549; "Purificazione," in Thesaurus Cultus et Rituum Antiquorum (LIMC, 2004), p. 83. See also the Lusus Troiae.
  11. ^ Varro, De lingua latina 5.154; Lawrence Richardson, A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 83; Humphrey, Roman Circuses, p. 543. Valerius Maximus (1.7.4) is the only ancient source, likely erroneous, to say that the Plebeian Games were held in the Circus Flaminius, which had no track for the chariot races known to be part of these ludi; see T.P. Wiseman, Remus: A Roman Myth (Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 211.
  12. ^ Humphrey, Roman Circuses, p. 544.
  13. ^ Humphrey, Roman Circuses, p. 15.
  14. ^ Humphrey, Roman Circuses, p. 544.

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