The ludi saeculares of a.d. 204 represented an important milestone in the reign of Septimius Severus.Footnote 1 Yet these games left little impression on the main historiographical (and biographical) traditions. Save one passage in Herodian,Footnote 2 there is nothing in the Vita Severi, nor, ostensibly, in the remains of Cassius Dio. Dio's silence has been viewed traditionally as a result of the imperfect textual transmission of the Roman History.Footnote 3 However, traces of the event have been detected in Xiphilinus’ Epitome. Xiphilinus’ description at 77(76).1.4–5 of a seven-day spectacle featuring exotic animals emerging from a boat-like contraption accords well with visual evidence from the ‘laetitia temporum’ series of coins, as well as with a fragment from the so-called acta ludorum saecularium describing the beast hunts which formed part of the ludi honorarii.Footnote 4
Yet other explanations have been offered to account for Dio's apparent silence. For Rantala, the omission of the Severan ludi saeculares in the transmitted text of Dio was a deliberate choice by the senatorial historian himself.Footnote 5 Rowan has suggested that Dio ‘transplanted’ his account of the games, merging it with his description of Severus’ decennalia of 202 so as to ‘underscore the extravagance of the emperor’.Footnote 6 Scott has taken this position further, and looked for a solution in Dio's compositional strategy, whereby Dio compressed the spectacles of several years into one narrative unit to illustrate the difference between the apparent stability of the Severan regime and its inner instability.Footnote 7 Unfortunately, these recent positions are not tenable, for a crucial piece of evidence has been overlooked.
This evidence comes from codex Vaticanus gr. 156, a codex containing Zosimus’ New History. In the upper margin of fol. 27v there is the following annotation alongside Zosimus’ brief history of the games (Zos. 2.5):
ταύτην τὴν ἑορτὴν σεκουλάρια ὁ Δίων καλεῖσθαι φησὶ καὶ ἐπὶ ἑαυτοῦ γεγονέναι ὑπὸ τοῦ σευήρου συγγράφειFootnote 8
Dio says that this festival is called ‘secular’ and writes that it occurred in his own time under Severus
The significance of this scholium has not been widely appreciated.Footnote 9 What it establishes is that Dio's history once made explicit reference to the Severan ludi saeculares, treating them as a discrete named event. This adds considerable weight to the assertion that a trace of Dio's narrative of the games of 204 is preserved by Xiphilinus at 77(76).1.4–5. Yet Xiphilinus chose to omit Dio's specific identification of the games when he compiled his epitome.Footnote 10 Furthermore, if Bandini and Forcina are correct in the identification of the glossator at 27v in Vaticanus gr. 156 with Xiphilinus himself, then Xiphilinus, although clearly interested in the games, chose to omit all references to the ludi saeculares in his Epitome, even the games of 17 b.c., which Dio records at 54.18.2.Footnote 11
Although this evidence invalidates the arguments of those who have looked to Dio to account for the silence, Scott's solution may be applied (mutatis mutandis) to Xiphilinus. Assuming that Dio's annalistic structure was maintained throughout the contemporary books, 77(76).1–2 appears to be a conflation of three successive years’ worth of annalistic material, which was selected on account of its similarity of content.Footnote 12 At any rate, this ‘fragment’ from the margin of Vaticanus gr. 156, fol. 27v, should be added to a future edition of Dio's Roman History. If it also makes us think more about Xiphilinus, so much the better.
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