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Updated: June 18, 2025
Seven complete laps of this course constituted a missus or race, and the number of races in a day varied from time to time, according to the season of the year and the equipment of the particular ludi. The rivalry between factions and colours, which became so famous later on and lasted throughout the period of the Empire, was only just beginning in Cicero's time.
From the same passage it would seem that Caelius had also been urging him to take other steps in his province of which he disapproved, no doubt with the same object of raising money for the ludi. This letter to Caelius is not extant, but we may believe that Cicero had the courage to reprove his old pupil, and that the constant worrying for panthers was more than even his amiability could stand.
And yet those were still more to blame who of old gave leave that criminals, to what sort of death soever condemned, should be cut up alive by the physicians, that they might make a true discovery of our inward parts, and build their art upon greater certainty; for, if we must run into excesses, it is more excusable to do it for the health of the soul than that of the body; as the Romans trained up the people to valour and the contempt of dangers and death by those furious spectacles of gladiators and fencers, who, having to fight it out to the last, cut, mangled, and killed one another in their presence: "Quid vesani aliud sibi vult ars impia ludi, Quid mortes juvenum, quid sanguine pasta voluptas?"
In our own day the same work is carried on by the big-game sportsman, somewhat farther afield; the pleasure of slaughter being now confined to the few rich and adventurous, who shoot for their own delectation, and not to make a London holiday. Thus to all his ludi the citizen had the right of admission free of cost.
The thanksgiving-festival of the Roman community, which had been already organized in the previous period essentially under Greek influence and in the first instance as an extraordinary festival, the -ludi maximi- or -Romani-, acquired during the present epoch a longer duration and greater variety in the amusements.
Their frequent use in funeral games is a somewhat loathsome feature of the age. These funeral games were an old religious institution, occurring on the ninth day after the burial, and known as Ludi Novemdiales; they are familiar to every one from Virgil's skilful introduction of them, as a Roman equivalent for the Homeric games, in the fifth Aeneid, on the anniversary of the funeral of Anchises.
We must now turn in the last place to consider the nature of the entertainments, and see whether there was any improving or educational influence in them. These had originally consisted entirely of shows of a military character, as we have seen in the case of the Ludi Romani, and especially of chariot-racing in the old Circus Maximus.
Of the other three ludi, Apollinares, Megalenses, and Florales, we only know that they included both circenses and plays; we must take it as probable that the former were in their programme from the first. There is no need to describe here in detail the manner of the chariot-racing.
These ludi will form the chief subject of this chapter; but we must first mention one or two of the old feriae which seem always to have remained occasions of holiday-making, at any rate for the lower classes of the population.
But the usual way of supplementing it was for the magistrate in charge of the ludi to pay what he could out of his own purse, or to get his friends to help him; and as all the ludi except the Apollinares were in charge of the aediles, it became the practice for these, if they aspired to reach the praetorship and consulship, to vie with each other in the recklessness of their expenditure.
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