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Ludi (Latin:games; plural of "ludus") were public games held for the benefit and entertainment of the SPQR. Ludi were held in conjunction with, or sometimes as the major feature of, Roman religious festivals, and were also presented as part of the cult of state.
The earliest ludi were horse races in the circus ( ludi circenses).Not all chariot races were part of religious festivals. Animal exhibitions with mock hunts ( Venatio) and theatrical performances ( ludi scaenici) also became part of the festivals.Mary Beard, J.A. North, and S.R.F. Price, Religions of Rome: A History (Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 66. Because some of these entertainments are not competitive "games", ludi may also be translated more generally as "shows".Betty Rose Nagle, (1995). Ovid's Fasti : Roman Holidays (Indiana University Press, 1995), p. 25.
Days on which ludi were held were public holidays, and no business could be conducted—"remarkably," it has been noted, "considering that in the Roman Empire more than 135 days might be spent at these entertainments" during the year.Matthew Bunson, A Dictionary of the Roman Empire (Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 246. In the late Roman Republic, 57 days were spent at ludi on fixed dates, with many of the additional game days added by Augustus. Although their entertainment value may have overshadowed religious sentiment at any given moment, even in late antiquity the ludi were understood as part of the worship of the traditional gods, and the Church Fathers thus advised Christians not to participate in the festivities.Beard, Religions of Rome, p. 262.
The singular form ludus, "game, sport" or "play" has several meanings in Latin. Ludus, for instance, may refer to child's play, erotic game-playing, an elementary school, and a training camp for gladiators: Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982, 1985 reprint), pp. 1048–1049. The plural is used for "games" in a sense analogous to the Greek festivals of games, such as the Panhellenic Games.Helen Lovatt, Statius and Epic Games: Sport, Politics, and Poetics in the Thebaid (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 5–6. The late antiquity scholar Isidore of Seville, however, classifies the forms of ludus as gymnicus ("athletic"), circensis ("held in the circus," mainly the chariot races), gladiatorius ("gladiatorial") and scaenicus ("theatrical").Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae 18.16.3. The relation of gladiatorial games to the ludi is complex; see Gladiator.
As religious ceremonies, ludi were organized at first by various colleges of priests; during the Roman Republic, they were later presented by Roman consul, but became most associated with the responsibilities of the . Although public money was allocated for the staging of ludi, the presiding official increasingly came to augment the splendor of his games from personal funds as a form of public relations.Lovat, Statius and Epic Games, p. 10. The sponsor was able to advertise his wealth, while declaring that he intended to share it for public benefit. Although some men with an eye on the consulship skipped the office of aedile for the very reason that massive expenditures were expected, those with sufficient resources spent lavishly to cultivate the favor of the people. The religious festivals to which the ludi were attached also occasioned public banquets, and often public works such as the refurbishing or building of temples.Overview based on Sumi, Ceremony and Power (see below). For an example, see discussion of Clodius Pulcher's aedileship in W. Jeffrey Tatum, The Patrician Tribune (University of North Carolina Press, 1999), pp. 198–199 online.
Following the assassination of Julius Caesar at the Ides of March in 44 BC, Marcus Brutus realized that a significant segment of the populus regarded him not as a liberator, but as the murderer of a beloved champion, and among other gestures of goodwill toward the people, he arranged to sponsor the Ludi Apollinares, held annually July 6–13. Caesar's heir Octavian at once upstaged him with Ludi Victoriae Caesaris, "games in honor of Caesar's victory," which ran July 20–28 in conjunction with a festival to honor Venus Genetrix, Caesar's patron deity and divine matriarch of the gens Iulia. During these ludi, which also served as funeral games, a bright comet appeared, which was taken as a sign of Caesar's newly divine status. Octavian recognized the value of the festivals in unifying the people, and as Augustus instituted new ludi within his program of religious reform; public spectacles and entertainments were thus subsumed by Imperial cult.Geoffrey S. Sumi, Ceremony and Power: Performing Politics in Rome between Republic and Empire (University of Michigan Press, 2005), p. 15. Brutus's Ludi Apollinares is discussed at length, pp. 143–150, followed by discussion of Octavian's counter-efforts. See also John T. Ramsey and A. Lewis Licht, The Comet of 44 B.C. and Caesar's Funeral Games (American Philological Association, 1997), and Ittai Gradel, Emperor worship and Roman religion (Oxford University Press, 2002).
In 67 BC, the Compitalia had been disrupted by a riot at the ludi,Asconius 45C. which were also the scene of disturbances in 66–65 BC. This unrest on the first occasion was a response to the trial of Gaius Manilius, who had backed reforms pertaining to the voting rights of freedmen, and on the second is attached to the murky events later referred to misleadingly as the First Catilinarian Conspiracy.Andrew Lintott, Violence in Republican Rome (Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 80. Along with some forms of occupational guilds ( collegia) and neighborhood associations, the ludi compitalicii were consequently banned by the Roman senate in 64 BC.Nicholas Purcell, "The City of Rome and the plebs urbana in the late Republic," The Cambridge Ancient History (Cambridge University Press, 1994, 2003, 2nd ed.) vol. 9, p. 674. For a discussion of the problematic relationship of the vici and the collegia, see W. Jeffrey Tatum, The Patrician Tribune: Publius Clodius Pulcher (University of North Carolina Press, 1999), p. 117. John Bert Lott, The Neighborhoods of Augustan Rome (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 177, makes a distinction between the Compitalia proper, which was a state holiday, and the localized celebrations that were "discouraged at times."
An unnamed tribune supported efforts to stage the ludi for 61 BC, but the consul-designate Metellus Celer halted the attempt.Cicero, In Pisonem 7.25–26; Tatum, Patrician Tribune p. 118. In 58 BC, Clodius Pulcher, who had given up his patrician status to become one of the people's tribunes, restored the right of association, but even before his law was enacted, his aide Sextus Cloelius had prepared the way by organizing new-year ludi. The consul Calpurnius Piso, father-in-law of Caesar, permitted the games, even though the organizations that ran them were still outlawed.Cynthia Damon, "Sex. Cloelius, Scriba," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 94 (1992), pp. 228 and 232. Caesar banned the collegia and ludi again in 46 BC.
In 7 BC, Augustus reorganized Rome for administrative purposes into 265 districts which replaced but which were still called vici.Asconius 6–7; Suetonius, Divus Julius 42.3 and Augustus 30.2 and 31.4; William Warde Fowler, The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic (London, 1908), pp. 279–280. Costas Panayotakis, Decimus Laberius: The Fragments (Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 208, is not convinced that ludi scaenici, or theatrical performances, were part of the crossroads events. An image of the Genius of Augustus now stood between the Lares at the crossroads shrines, and the ludi once considered dangerously subversive became expressions of Imperial pietas.Anthony James Boyle, An Introduction to Roman Tragedy (Routledge, 2006), p. 174.
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