Secular Games

in various representations, are the sun and the moon, respectively, so they can mirror the heavenly scene.

But I think it's also really important to remember that Apollo and Diana were two key deities when it came to the Augustan celebration of the Lude Seculares, the secular games, the games that were celebrated once in a generation, this idea of renewal, of... of time.

And they are in the first lines of Horace's Carmen Seculari.

So this is tying into a lot of religious practice in the Augustan state around 19 to 17 BCE.

So 17 BCE is when the secular games are celebrated.

19 BCE is when standards are returned by the Parthian nation.

But before we get to that central scene of the return of the standards, there are on either side, the middle, the far sides of the breastplate at the front, we have two female figures on either side who are seated.

He did, and he used it.

The most spectacular example was the secular games in 17 BC, which he staged as the dawn of a new era.

The Sibylline books were said to prophesy the games, and Augustus had a new hymn, the Carmen Secular, written for the occasion by the poet Horace.

It was performed by a choir of boys and girls at the temple.