ames, 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 pretor to have the direction of them, and the decemviri to offer sacrifices after the Greek rite. The first pretor by whom they were held was P. Cornelius Sylla. For some time they were movable or indicative, but at length were fixed, under P. Licinius Varus, to the fifth of July, and made perpetual. The Apollinarian games were merely scencical, 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 they still remained scencical, no chariot races, wrestling, or laborious exercises of the body, being ever practised at them.