[112] The charge of the Secular Games, celebrated supposedly once in a century, though in reality oftener, fell to the quindecemvirs. Cf. Eckhel, VI. 102, for a coin with imp. Cæsar Augustus lud. saec. XV S. F. This was in 737. Cf. also C. I. L., I, p. 442. The college evidently gave the presidency to Augustus and Agrippa, since it was very convenient that these two members of the sacred body also held the tribunitial power, and so the games came into the charge of the two greatest men of the state in a perfectly natural way. Cf. C. I. L., IX, p. 29, No. 262, for confirmation of Agrippa’s membership in the college of quindecemvirs.
[113] These games were celebrated on August 1. Dio, LX, 5, and LVI, 46, tells of their being annual, and in charge of the consuls after the death of Augustus. They began in 752. This passage is one of the few where both the Latin and Greek are incapable of restoration.
[114] Cf. Suet. Aug. 43. Some of these occasions were: in 743 in connection with the dedication of the theatre of Marcellus. Cf. Dio, LIV, 26. Here six hundred beasts were killed, and the tiger was shown for the first time. Cf. Pliny, Hist. Nat., VIII, 17, 65. In 752, two hundred and sixty lions and thirty-six crocodiles were killed. Cf. Dio, LV, 10. In 765, in the games given by Germanicus, two hundred lions were killed. Cf. Dio, LVI, 27.
Augustus says “amphitheatres,” though there was but one such structure. He may have regarded it as being two theatres joined at their straight side and facing each other.
[115] Velleius II, 100, writes: “The divine Augustus in the year when he was consul with Gallus Caninius (752) sated the minds and the eyes of the Roman people at the dedication of the temple of Mars with the most magnificent gladiatorial shows and naval battles.” Dio, LV, 10, says that traces of the excavation could be seen in his time (c. 200 A. D.), and that the fight represented a battle of Athenians and Persians, in which the former were victorious. Cf. Suet. Aug. 43; Ovid, Ars Am. I, 171.
Claudius gave a similar exhibition on the Fucine Lake, but with a hundred triremes and quadriremes, and a force of nineteen thousand men, “as once Augustus did in a pond by the Tiber, but with lighter vessels and a smaller force.” Cf. Tac. Ann. XII, 56; Suet. Claud., 21; Dio, LX, 33.
[116] Another instance of avoidance of the name of an enemy while distinctly referring to him. Antony had stripped various temples at Samos, Ephesus, Pergamos, and Rhœteum, all in the province of Asia, and had given the spoils to Cleopatra. Dio, LI, 17, says that great numbers of such things were found in her palace when Alexandria was captured. Pliny, Hist. Nat., XXXIV, 8, 58, says: “He (Myro) made an Apollo, which was taken away by the triumvir Antony, but restored to the Ephesians by the divine Augustus.” Strabo, XIII, 1, 30, writes of Rhœteum: “Cæsar Augustus gave back to the Rhœtians the shrine and statue of Ajax which Antony had taken away and given to Egypt. He did the like for other cities. For Antony took away the finest votive offerings from the most famous shrines for the gratification of the Egyptian woman, but Augustus restored them.” Ib. XIV, 1, 14, writes of the temple of Hera, at Samos: “Antony took away three colossal sitting statues on one base, but Augustus Cæsar restored two of them, Athene and Heracles, to the same base; the Zeus, however, he placed upon the Capitol.”
[117] Suetonius, Aug., 52, says these gifts took the form of tripods. Cf. Dio, LIII, 22; LII, 35; LIV, 35.
[118] The allusion is to Sextus Pompeius, whose fleets, manned largely by slaves, cut off the grain ships on their way to Rome. Again Augustus avoids the name of an opponent. Cf. Vell., II, 73, who thinks it remarkable that a son of the great Pompey, who had freed the sea from pirates, should himself defile it with piratical crimes. Florus, IV, 8, reflects the same sentiment. App. B. C., V, 77, 80, says that captured pirates under torture confessed that Sextus Pompeius was the instigator of their crimes. When the peace of Misenum was made, Sextus Pompeius stipulated for the freedom of the slaves who had fought under him. It was after the overthrow of Pompey, in 718, that the slaves were returned. Dio, XLIX, 12, adds that slaves whose masters did not claim them were returned to their several cities, there to be crucified. Cf. App. B. C., V, 131; Oros. VI, 18.
[119] This was in 722, just before the breaking out of hostilities between Antony and Octavian. Cf. Dio, L, 6; Suet., Aug. 17.