Valerius Maximus Research Articles

Pitying Antiochus: Italian Humanism and the Philology of Compassion

ABSTRACT The study of emotions has been prominent within medieval and early modern studies. However, much remains to be explored, particularly regarding how literature might shed light on broader cultural outlooks and the construction and application of specific emotions in past societies. This article delves into Italian humanist culture’s comprehension and utilisation of a particular emotion: compassion. By closely examining the literary reception of an ancient story – Valerius Maximus’ exemplum of Seleucus, Antiochus, and Stratonica – in the writings of four humanists: Boccaccio, Petrarch, Bruni, and Manetti, the article proposes what might be described as a ‘philology of compassion’. It demonstrates how the various renditions of the tale predominantly revolve around compassion, revealing the debates within the humanist community concerning the nature of this emotion, its ethical and political significance, and those to whom it should be most directed.

Did Fully Fledged humanitas Exist before the Ciceronian Age?

Abstract This article investigates the relationship between the noun humanitas and the adjective humanus. In particular, it argues that literary evidence suggests that the comparative and the superlative of humanus are far more suitable than its positive grade to render the Greek ideas of παιδεία and/or φιλανθρωπία which are usually subsumed in the word humanitas. One of the main consequences of this is therefore that it might be hazardous to speak about the humanitas of authors who wrote before the comparative and the superlative of humanus, if not the word humanitas itself, were first attested. Crucial to this discussion are passages by Aulus Gellius, Terence, Cicero, Valerius Maximus and Ammianus, as well as some occurrences of the expressions studia humanitatis and studia humaniora we find in some Renaissance Humanists.

New Ways of Reading Valerius Maximus (on J. Murray and D. Wardle, edd., Reading by Example: Valerius Maximus and the Historiography of Exempla)

New Ways of Reading Valerius Maximus (on J. Murray and D. Wardle, edd., Reading by Example: Valerius Maximus and the Historiography of Exempla)

Political Mythology in the Work of Valerius Maximus

The article examines the ideas about the republic in the work of the Roman author Valerius Maximus, who lived at the beginning of the principate. The most revealing elements of the republican structure are taken for analysis: the People's Assembly, the Senate, the Tribunes of the Plebs, freedom, the enemies of freedom, as well as the image of Cato the Younger as the embodiment of the moral spirit of the republic. Valerius's narrative is dominated by outstanding personalities and the Senate, which fully corresponds to the current political situation. Such attention to the individual reflects a certain departure from polis collectivism. "Freedom" is perceived by Valerius undoubtedly as the antipode of the sole power, although the special position of the princeps in the new political system was also realized by our author. However, the contradiction here is only external, since already under Augustus an understanding of freedom as “security” (securitas) was formed, which linked freedom with authoritarian power. The views of Valerius Maximus basically correspond to the optimate’ worldview, i.e. the res publica of the past for him is primarily associated with the leadership of the Senate. But this optimate’ view reflects the opposition of the “best citizens” not only to the unreasonable people, but also to the claims of an outstanding personality to sole rule. In this respect, this “program” has come into clear contradiction with the new political situation, changing and adapting as the monarchical principle strengthens. The transformation of optimate’ views is shown by the example of an ardent supporter of the republic Cato the Younger, whose image in Valerius Maximus’ work reflects the transformation of past events into textbook examples outside the historical context.

A. M. Smorchkov. Valerius Maximus. Nine Books of Memorable Deeds and Sayings. Translation, Introduction and Commentary. Moscow, 2020

A. M. Smorchkov. Valerius Maximus. Nine Books of Memorable Deeds and Sayings. Translation, Introduction and Commentary. Moscow, 2020

Reading by Example: Valerius Maximus and the Historiography of Exempla ed. by J. Murray and D. Wardle (review)

Reading by Example: Valerius Maximus and the Historiography of Exempla ed. by J. Murray and D. Wardle (review)

Malleable Masculinity: Rethinking Paul’s Masculinity in Light of Valerius Maximus

Scholarly appraisals of Paul’s masculinity differ widely. Some conclude that Paul is presented (by himself or another author) as an ideal man. Others argue that Paul rejects dominant norms of manliness or that he offers a countercultural alternative. This article draws on the work of Valerius Maximus, whose writing has been neglected in this conversation, to argue that Roman imperial culture offered a variety of measures of elite masculinity. Scholars often mention control of self and others as norms of manliness, and of these Valerius emphasizes practices of self-control. Even with this knowledge, however, evaluating masculinity requires discernment. An individual’s motivations and circumstances are essential factors in Valerius’s application of the social norms. The article encourages scholars to consider this more complex set of cultural norms in assessing the manliness of Paul or other New Testament figures.

RUSH JOB: SLAVERY AND BREVITY IN THE EARLY ROMAN PRINCIPATE

The upswing in brief forms of literature in the early Roman principate is marked. From Ovid to Velleius Paterculus, Phaedrus to Valerius Maximus, this aesthetic trend seems to transcend genre. Such a phenomenon has thus far been understood as arising from either the pressures of literary tradition or the transformations in the organisation of elite knowledge. This article disagrees. It posits a new prospective causality behind the eruption in brevity, namely the state of slavery and its time-conscious way of being in the world. The article performs a close comparative reading of Phaedrus’Fablesalongside Velleius Paterculus’Compendium of Roman Historyto show how brevity and its suspension can be understood as formal constraints, acts of service and redemptive aesthetic coping modes – all determined by the historical conditions of enslavement. It concludes with a coda on the general association of poetry with bondage and constraint in the late Republic and early Empire.

The Reception of Cicero in the Early Roman Empire: The Rhetorical Schoolroom and the Creation of a Cultural Legend by T. J. Keeline

Reviewed by: The Reception of Cicero in the Early Roman Empire: The Rhetorical Schoolroom and the Creation of a Cultural Legend by T. J. Keeline Martin T. Dinter T. J. Keeline, The Reception of Cicero in the Early Roman Empire: The Rhetorical Schoolroom and the Creation of a Cultural Legend. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 388 pp. ISBN: 9781108426237 Cultural memory is a strange beast indeed. While there is no doubt that Cicero sculpted his own image during his lifetime, he could hardly have foreseen that as soon as the first century AD he would be defined by his style—i.e., that the style would become the man. The incorporation of Cicero into Roman cultural memory is thus highly selective. Without explicitly buying into the framework of cultural memory studies, Keeline, in the revised version of his 2014 Harvard dissertation, illuminates this process in seven chapters by focusing on Cicero’s early reception. The first four chapters on the reception of Cicero in Roman education are followed by three more specialized sections on Cicero in the works of Seneca the Younger, Tacitus, and Pliny the Younger. Reception indeed serves as the overarching framework for this monograph, even though Keeline shies away from deconstructing its tenets. We cannot fathom whether or not Roman schoolboys “enjoyed” reading Cicero as much as today’s students, but Keeline employs Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria, the commentaries of Asconius, and the Scholia Bobiensia to illustrate how young Romans would have encountered Cicero’s speech Pro Milone in the classroom. The rhetorically focused pedagogical approach—namely, the narrowing of Cicero’s persona and personality in a pedagogical context to a model of eloquence (which strips him of his historical and psychological complexity)—that emerges from this analysis usefully exemplifies the process Keeline expounds in the second chapter. The third chapter highlights the prominence of Cicero’s death in Roman declamation. It proposes that the narrative that Cicero was murdered by Popilius, a former client whom he had previously defended against the charge of parricide, is but an added color of the rhetorician schools. This nevertheless fits neatly with Octavian’s desire to downplay his own role in the proscriptions and shift the blame onto Mark Anthony. Cicero thus does not serve as advocate of Republican freedom but rather as advocate of freedom from Mark Anthony. In addition, the style and content of these declamations left behind traces in the accounts of Cicero’s death by Valerius Maximus and many of the historiographers such as Florus, Velleius Paterculus, and later authors such as Cassius Dio and Appian. In contrast, the chronologically fairly early accounts by Livy and Asinius Pollio still offer a morally more complicated image of both Cicero and the events surrounding his death. In the fourth chapter, Keeline ingeniously examines a group of pseudepigraphic texts that have distilled Cicero to the essence consumed in declamation schools: the Invective against Cicero (Ps.-Sallust) contrasts neatly with the Invective against Sallust (Ps.-Cicero), the Speech delivered the day before Cicero went into exile and the Letter to Octavian (Ps.-Cicero), and a pair of Ps.-Brutus’ letters to Cicero and Atticus (transmitted as Cic. Ad Brut. 1.16 and 1.17). Stylistically faithful, these texts concentrate on major life events such as Cicero’s consulship, his exile, and his speeches against Mark Anthony. [End Page 90] In addition, they provide an inventory of the tropes that formed around Cicero s life and character and subsequently found their way into the historiographical tradition. The book’s second part delves into the oeuvres, of Seneca the Younger (chapter 5), Tacitus (chapter 6), and Pliny the Younger (chapter 7) and analyses how each of them comes to terms with the über-father Cicero. Seneca the Younger adopts neither Cicero’s style nor his philosophy or educational theories. Even in his edifying letters to Lucilius, he only utilises Cicero’s correspondence with Atticus as a foil against which he constructs his own philosophical achievements. While Seneca the Elder engages frequently and substantially with Cicero, in his son’s works Cicero is conspicuous by absence. Tacitus’ Dialogus de Oratoribus is steeped in Cicero as Keeline demonstrates by analysing the speeches by Aper...

Exemplary Biography

Abstract Moving away from the nineteenth century’s concern with Quellenforschung, serious study of Valerius Maximus’ Facta et dicta memorabilia in the twentieth century produced a variety of different approaches to this Tiberian text of exemplary tales. One of the most interesting projects in this regard was produced by T.F. Carney, who scrutinised a key exemplar, Gaius Marius, across the work. In constructing a ‘biography’ from the exempla themselves, Carney’s labour contributed much to Roman history generally, but also pioneered a novel methodology for reading Valerius Maximus—one that was taken up and imitated by later scholars. This methodology, however, is not without problems, particularly in relation to the way that Valerius has shaped, structured, and arranged his work at the level of chapter. By building upon Carney’s methodology, but also considering the context of the individual chapters themselves, I provide in this paper a case study of the way in which Valerius writes the life of Marcus Tullius Cicero—a figure unique in the Facta et dicta memorabilia in being both exemplar and a major source for the work. In doing so, this article elucidates the process of ‘exemplary biography’.

Commenting on Valerius Maximus (on J. Briscoe, Valerius Maximus, ‘Facta et Dicta Memorabilia’, Book 8: Text, Introduction, and Commentary)

Commenting on Valerius Maximus (on J. Briscoe, Valerius Maximus, ‘Facta et Dicta Memorabilia’, Book 8: Text, Introduction, and Commentary)

Exemplary Negotiations of <em>Patientia</em>

This paper examines the tensions that were inherent within the Roman moral concept, patientia, focusing on the versions of exemplary patientia provided by Cicero, Livy and Valerius Maximus. These authors use exemplarity to navigate the contradictory possibilities of patientia by emphasizing the agency and autonomy of their exempla. This allows authors to distinguish positive versions of the quality from negative versions, particularly those associated with women and enslaved individuals. This paper also considers how exemplary accounts of patientia facilitated a discussion about ideal morality and behaviour within shifting political circumstances and explores the roll of exemplarity in negotiating ideologies in Rome.

Poetas inesperados: los versos de Juan Alfonso de Zamora y Fernando Díaz de Toledo en los paratextos de la primera traducción castellana de Valerio Máximo

En este artículo se estudian y editan unos versos correspondientes al género de las Preguntas y respuestas, obra de dos personajes activos en la época de Juan II y vinculados a las cortes de Castilla y Aragón: Juan Alfonso de Zamora, secretario del rey de Castilla, y Fernando Díaz de Toledo, arcediano de Niebla. El poema no entró en ninguno de los cancioneros y podría entenderse como una poesía de circunstancias sin mayor interés. Ahora bien, leyéndolo junto con el prólogo al que acompaña ―el de la primera traducción castellana de los Facta et dicta memoriabilia de Valerio Máximo― y en el marco de la peripecia vital de Juan Alfonso de Zamora y de Fernando Díaz de Toledo se llena de significado y pone de manifiesto que sus autores, de los que no se documenta ninguna otra actividad poética, participaban de los ejercicios poéticos cortesanos y conocían perfectamente los recursos métricos, retóricos y estéticos de aquella poesía, dando entrada además, alguna broma relacionada con descendientes de conversos.

Colard Mansion et l’Imprimeur du Flavius Josèphe : deux collaborateurs à Bruge. Essai sur les relations entre les productions manuscrite et imprimée à Bruges à la fin du xve siècle

Colard Mansion is a well-known printer in Bruges, but he began his career as a copyist and librarian. He continued to practice this activity during his printing period as shown by a rare contract made in 1480, in which he committed to produce a copy of the French translation of the Facta and dicta memorabilia of Valerius Maximus by Simon de Hesdin and Nicolas de Gonesse for Philippe de Hornes, lord of Gaesbeeck (Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, ms. 5194-5195). It appeared that this manuscript was clearly copied from a copy of the editio princeps of this text. This edition bears no indication of location, date or even printer. It was ascribed to an anonymous printer active in the Southern Netherlands, named the Printer of Flavius Josephus according to one of his editions. Beginning with this clue, the links between this printer and Mansion appear to be tight and this opens the way to a rather different vision of the librarian activity of Mansion in Bruges.

Composizione, lectio e competenze del senatus alto-repubblicano

The paper deals with the Roman senatus in the period from 5th to 3rd century BC, from the point of view of its composition, completion and selected competences. As to its composition, in the most arcaic times of the Roman state, the senate was an assembly of the heads of clans (patres gentium), who represented the ideas of patricians. The paper presents gradual transformation of the composition of the senate and switch towards the inclusion of the plebeians. It describes also the process of the cooptation of the mem¬bers, rules of which incurred fundamental changes from the hereditary principles to the regulation given by statutes. A significant part of the paper is focused on the judiciary function of the senate and the relationship between the iudicium senatus and the iudici¬um populi, based mainly on the testimonies written by ancient authors as Livy, Valerius Maximus or Dionysios of Halicarnassus.

Tradición clásica, politica y humanismo en la Castilla del Cuatrocientos. Las Glosas de Alonso de Cartagena a "De Providentia"

La formation de l'État Moderne modifie les valeurs de l'Ordre de la Chevalerie: l'ethos guerrier incorpore une dimension savante. Clercs et lettrés facilitèrent aux laiques l'accès aux textes antiques leur donnant une direction moralisante. Les traductions sénéquistes de Alonso de Cartagena sont un témoin éloquent de ce phénomène. Son appréciation sur Sénèque révèle la subordination de l'eloquence à la morale. Les gloses dirigent la lecture dans une stricte orthodoxie: on distingue trois types: 1) Celles qui informent sur des personnages historiques et mytholo­giques, ses sources (Platon, Orose, Valerio Máximo, Cicéron, Ovide, Bible et un ouvrage intitulé Romulion) révèlent une vaste culture classique. Ce qui l'interesse n'est pas la precision historique, mais la morale exemplaire. Face à la mythologie, il manifeste une méfiance avertie. 2) Celles qui discutent des aspects doctrinaux: suicide et libre arbi­tre. Pleine profession d'orthodoxie qui ne cache pas certaines tensions. 3) Celles qui font allusion aux problèmes de traduction justifient la version offerte. Parfois, on fait allusion à l'actualité: la glose prend une pleine valeur historique et -étant adressée au roi-, politique.

La “Laus Pisonis” traduite par Simon de Hesdin: la première traduction française d’un texte très rare. Quelques problèmes d’orientation du premier humanisme français

Simon de Hesdin cites his translations of several classical Latin texts, but is only known to us through his translation and extensive commentary of the first books of Valerius Maximus’ Factorum dictorumque memorabilium libri, with its dedication to Charles V, based in part on the commentary by Dionigi da Borgo Sansepolcro. Some years later Nicolas de Gonesse completed the translation and commentary, citing Boccaccio and Petrarch, considered to be the fathers of Italian Humanism. A widely held view holds that Simon de Hesdin is emblematic of mediaeval culture, whereas Nicolas de Gonesse is considered to display the marks of a nascent Humanism originating in Italy. Evidence is provided that shows that Simon de Hesdin shares the same points of view and very similar methods, and that these originate not in Italy but in northern France, some found in Vincent de Beauvais, and others in lesser known sources. Such for instance is the Laus Pisonis, an extremely rare text of remarkable literary quality: Simon de Hesdin drew it from a source similar to the Florilegium Gallicum. The text is not cited by Vincent de Beauvais in France, nor is it referred to by either Petrarch or Boccaccio. A number of scholars in Northern France began to explore and recognize the value of old and rare texts such as the Laus Pisonis, also translating them: a kind of Humanism before Humanism, which suggests that we need to re-consider some over-rigid historiographical models.

Exemplary Ethics in Ancient Rome by Rebecca Langlands

Reviewed by: Exemplary Ethics in Ancient Rome by Rebecca Langlands J. Mira Seo Rebecca Langlands. Exemplary Ethics in Ancient Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 368 pp. Cloth, $99.99. While exempla and discourses of exemplarity are understood as distinctive to Roman cultural practice, as scholars we tend to take their existence for granted in our analyses of Roman literature, history, or philosophy. Elite Roman authors utilize them, and our task is to explain how and why they function. Building on the work of Jane Chaplin, Matthew Roller, David Levene, and others, this monograph distinguishes itself from previous accounts of Roman exemplarity in two significant ways: (1) The scope of the periods and texts under examination is far more comprehensive than that of any earlier studies on the topic, and (2) The framework of "exemplary ethics" focuses on the practice of using exempla and on what about these particular vignettes or stories makes them didactically productive in generating ethical awareness and even growth. Even as its synthetic approach owes an acknowledged debt to Roller's groundbreaking 2004 article, "Exemplarity in Roman Culture: the Cases of Horatius Cocles and Cloelia" (CP 99:1–56), attention to ethical praxis ("exemplary ethics") reveals unexpected features and details in these most familiar tales. As Langlands explains, although the characters and scenarios may be relatively fixed in repetition, exempla are persistent and useful because of their essential hermeneutic ambiguity, not by embodying a single established lesson as one might expect. In two enlightening chapters, Langlands explores this indeterminacy as a feature, not a bug, of exemplary thinking that contributes to their educational capacity (chapter 2, "The Special Capacity of Exemplary Stories," and chapter 7, "Indeterminacy of Exempla: Interpretation, Motivation and Improvisation"). Given the broad chronological and generic scope of the evidence, in chapter 1 Langlands isolates a few specific narratives as "archetypes" (Mucius Scaevola, Fabius Maximus Cunctator, and T. Manlius Torquatus) and returns to these examples consistently throughout the work. While chapters 2–4 establish the practice of exemplary ethics by relying on these synthetic, archetypal narratives, precise case studies and close readings of individual literary and philosophical texts illustrate the complexity of exemplarity as an instructional medium for ethical education. These close readings ground the methodological reframing of exemplary ethics in the early chapters and demonstrate the payoff of potentially abstract concepts like the "site of exemplarity" (related to studies in cultural memory, 173 and chapter 8 passim). In describing a site of exemplarity as a "heterogeneous field of reference" (175, original emphasis) rather than a singular point—that is, the exemplum itself—Langlands' analysis explains contradictions inherent in the exemplary tradition as productive ethical features. Chapter 12, "Controversial Thinking through Exempla," explores "controversiality" in two detailed readings: a debate in De finibus between Cicero and Lucius Torquatus on the latter's distinguished ancestor, T. Manlius Torquatus, and the problematic and contradictory figure of Regulus in multiple literary works. As Langlands states, [End Page 311] "It is a characteristic of exempla (or sites of exemplarity) to possess ethical ambiguities, conflicts or difficulties that stimulate such ethical debate and reflection" (258). This chapter well illustrates the interplay between cultural consensus and indeterminacy in two different kinds of "controversial thinking": in De finibus, Langlands shows how the interlocutors use "a tale whose possession of moral and cultural value is ultimately not in question, and used it to consider some highlevel philosophical questions about what might count as moral value, what kind of motivation for deeds would count as a good one, and what, in the end, counts as good in human life" (266). In the second case, Livy's debate between Scipio and Fabius on Regulus initially provides another illustration of a controversial exemplum deployed in rhetoric, which Langlands then expands to consider the contradictory accounts and interpretations found in Diodorus Siculus, Valerius Maximus, Cicero in De officiis, and Horace C. 3.5. Although these transformations and inconsistencies may seem to contradict the notion of consensus in cultural memory, Langlands explores how the Regulus exemplum functions differently in each of the works to demonstrate a range of ethical reactions. Regulus' essential indeterminacy as an exemplum makes the figure especially fungible for diverse literary and...

Valerius Maximus on 'Undeserved Triumphs' (2.8.5)

Valerius Maximus on 'Undeserved Triumphs' (2.8.5)* David Wardle In the middle of his discussion on the right to hold a triumph, Valerius Maximus sets out a ius that forbade the decree of a triumph in cases where the empire had not been extended, but territory had merely been regained (2.8.5). Below is the text as it appears in the edition of Briscoe:1 Quin etiam ius de quo loquor sic custoditum est ut P. Scipioni ob reciperatas Hispanias M. Marcello ob captas Syracusas triumphus non decerneretur, quod ad eas res gerendas sine ullo erant missi magistratu. probentur nunc cuiuslibet gloriae cupidi, qui ex desertis montibus myoparonumque piraticis rostris laudis inopes laureae ramulos festinabunda manu decerpserunt: Carthaginis imperio abrupta Hispania et Siciliae caput abscisum triumphales iungere currus nequiuerunt. et quibus uiris? Scipioni et Marcello, quorum ipsa nomina instar aeterni sunt triumphi. sed clarissimos solidae ueraeque uirtutis auctores umeris suis salutem patriae gestantes, etsi coronatos intueri senatus cupiebat, ueriori tamen reseruandos laureae putauit. Indeed the regulation of which I speak was so well enforced that no triumph was decreed for P. Scipio for the recovery of the Spanish provinces or for M. Marcellus for the capture of Syracuse because they had been sent to carry out these operations without any magistracies. Now let approval be given to those who are eager for glory of any kind, those who have plucked with hasty hand sprigs of laurel that are destitute of praise from uninhabited mountains and the prows of pirate pinnaces: Spain torn away and the capital of Sicily amputated from Carthage's empire did not suffice to yoke triumphal chariots. And for what men? For Scipio and Marcellus, whose names them [End Page 231] -selves are like an everlasting triumph. But, although the Senate was eager to see them crowned, it thought that the most illustrious embodiments of substantial and true virtue, bearing the safety of their country on their shoulders, should nonetheless be reserved for a truer laurel.2 Valerius' thought moves from praise of the Senate for upholding the line that triumphs should not be given except where territory had been added to the Roman empire (2.8.4)3 to two examples of the Senate's adherence to another principle. Briefly stated, triumphs were not awarded to Scipio and Marcellus because they held no magistracy. Next he evinces apparent approval, signalled by probentur nunc, for granting triumphs that, while they do in some sense result from adding to Roman territory, nonetheless arise from achievements the merit of which Valerius may plausibly be demonstrated to have doubted. He then returns to the refusals of triumphs to Scipio and Marcellus again to laud the Senate for its adherence to principle. It is immediately apparent that the argument is interrupted by probentur … decerpserunt. This note focuses on the sentence that interrupts the argument. Only Ballesteros Pastor and Dart and Vervaet have paid any attention to it, and have proposed that Valerius alludes to L. Licinius Murena or Pompey respectively.4 Both suggestions require that Valerius is drawing a contrast between exempla from the third century BC and those from a more recent period.5 [End Page 232] From the absence of any clues to suggest that Valerius has Murena or Pompey in mind I will argue that these interpretations are improbable. First, L. Licinius Murena, father of the homonymous consul of 62 BC, appears nowhere among Valerius' exemplars, nor is there any inclusion of any material relating to the so-called 'Second Mithradatic War'.6 As for Pompey, who is a significant figure in Valerius' work, nothing in the chapter De iure triumphandi has suggested that Pompey is anywhere in view – only the tribunician Lex Maria et Porcia mentioned in the first exemplum has been drawn from Pompey's lifetime and, as far as I know, has never been interpreted as a measure aimed at Pompey.7 Pompey was not beyond criticism by Valerius, even though under both Augustus and Tiberius the treatment of Pompey's memory was generally positive:8 for example, although Pompey could be criticised for ignoring divine warnings of his impending defeat at Pharsalus (1.6.12), for displaying ingratitude in ordering the death...

The Republican Ludi Saeculares as a Cult of the Valerian Gens

Republican sacrifices held at the Tarentum in the Campus Martius constitute part of the lineage of the imperial ludi saeculares. Through an investigation of fragmentary and sometimes corrupt historical texts pertaining to the ludi saeculares, especially Verrius Flaccus, Varro, Valerius Antias, Valerius Maximus, Zosimus, and Plutarch, this article demonstrates that the Tarentum sacrifices were originally called ludi Tarentini, and were a cult of the Valerian gens that came under civic supervision in 249 bce. These ludi Tarentini were not associated with the concept of performance once per saeculum until Augustus created the ludi saeculares from Republican models in 17 bce.