Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] As for the origins, being rather obscure and unknown to most of our own people, there was nowhere deeper to dig than the records of pagan literature. [2] Many authors exist who have published treatises on this subject. From them the origin of the games is handed down as follows: Timaeus reports that the Lydians, migrating from Asia, settled in Etruria under the leadership of Tyrrhenus, who had yielded the kingship to his brother after a contest for the throne. So in Etruria, among their other superstitious rites, they also instituted spectacles, under the name of religion. From there the Romans borrowed the imported performers, and along with them the name, so that they were called "ludii" — players — after the Lydians. [3] But even though Varro derives "ludii" from "ludus," that is, from play — just as the Luperci too were called "ludii" because they run about at play — he nevertheless reckons that play to belong to the young, tied to feast days, temples, and rites. [4] Never mind the origin of the word now, since the case turns on idolatry, not etymology. For even when the games were indiscriminately called the Liberalia, they plainly rang with the honor of father Liber. They were first held for Liber by country folk in gratitude for the benefit they credit to him, the discovery of wine. [5] From there came the games called the Consualia, which originally honored Neptune — for they also call him Consus. Then Romulus named the Equirria for the horses, in honor of Mars; though some also credit Romulus with the Consualia, claiming he dedicated them to the god Consus — that is, as they would have it, the god of counsel, whose counsel it was that devised for his soldiers the rape of the Sabine virgins as a means to marriage. [6] A fine piece of counsel indeed — and even now, among the Romans themselves, reckoned just and lawful, not to say so before God! This too counts toward the stain on the origin: do not imagine something good whose beginning was taken from evil — from shamelessness, from violence, from hatred, from a fratricide as founder, from the son of Mars. [7] And even now an altar to Consus lies buried underground beside the very first post where the chariots turn in the Circus, bearing an inscription of this sort: CONSUS BY COUNSEL, MARS BY WAR, THE LARES BY... POWERFUL. There the public priests offer sacrifice on the Nones of July; and on the twelfth day before September's Kalends, the flamen of Quirinus together with the Vestal virgins performs the same rite. [8] Then that same Romulus instituted games for Jupiter Feretrius on the Tarpeian hill — called, Piso reports, the Tarpeian and Capitoline games; after him Numa Pompilius held games for Mars and for Robigo (for they even invented a goddess of blight); then Tullus Hostilius, then Ancus Marcius, and the rest. Which kings instituted games, in what order, and for which idols, is set down in Suetonius Tranquillus, or in the source from which Tranquillus took it. But this will be enough to establish the charge of idolatry against the origin of the games.