in Roman antiquity, were instituted in the year of Rome 542. The occasion was a kind of oracle delivered by the prophet Marcus after the fatal battle at Cannae, declaring that to expel the enemy, and cure the people of an infectious disease which then prevailed, sacred games were to be annually performed in honour of Apollo; the praetor to have the direction of them, and the decemviri to offer sacrifices after the Grecian rite. The senate ordered that this oracle should be observed the rather, because another of the same Marcus, wherein he had foretold the overthrow at Cannae, had come true; for this reason, they gave the praetor 12,000 asses out of the public cash to defray the solemnity. There were sacrificed an ox to Apollo, as also two white goats, and a cow to Latona; all with their horns gilt. Apollo had also a collection made for him, besides what the people who were spectators gave voluntarily. The first praetor by whom they were held was P. Cornelius Sylla. For some time they were moveable or indicative; but at length were fixed, under P. Licinius Varus, to the fifth of July, and made perpetual. The men, who were spectators at these games, wore garlands on their heads; the women performed their devotions in the temples at the same time, and at last they caroused together in the vestibules of their houses, the doors standing open. The Apollinarian games were merely scintical; and at first only observed with singing, piping, and other sorts of music; but afterwards there were also introduced all manner of mountebank tricks, dances, and the like: yet so as that they still remained scintical; no chariot races, wrestling, or the like laborious exercises of the body, being ever practised at them.