Originally it meant the time from the moment that something happened (for example the founding of a city) until the point in time that all people who had lived at the first moment had died. At that point a newsaeculum would start. According tolegend, the gods had allotted a certain number ofsaecula to every people or civilization; theEtruscans, for example, had been given ten saecula.[2]
By the 2nd century BC, Roman historians were using thesaeculum to periodize their chronicles and track wars.[3] At the time of the reign of emperorAugustus, theRomans decided that asaeculum was 110 years. In 17 BC, Caesar Augustus organizedLudi saeculares ("saecular games") for the first time to celebrate the "fifth saeculum of Rome".[4] Augustus aimed to link thesaeculum with imperial authority.[5]
Roman emperors legitimised their political authority by referring to thesaeculum in various media, linked to a golden age of imperial glory. In response, Christian writers began to define thesaeculum as referring to 'this present world', as opposed to the expectation of eternal life in the 'world to come'.[5] This results in the modern sense of 'secular' as 'belonging to the world and its affairs'.[8]
The English wordsecular, an adjective meaning something happening once in an eon, is derived from the Latinsaeculum.[9] The descendants of Latinsaeculum in the Romance languages generally mean "century" (i.e., 100 years): Frenchsiècle,[10] Spanishsiglo,[11] Portugueseséculo,[12] Italiansecolo,[13] etc.
^Diehl, Ernst (1934). "Das saeculum, seine Riten und Gebete: Teil I. Bedeutung und Quellen des saeculum. Die älteren saecula".Rheinisches Museum für Philologie. n.s.83 (3):255–272.ISSN0035-449X.JSTOR23078470.
^Barker, Duncan (1996). "'The Golden Age Is Proclaimed'? The Carmen Saeculare and the Renascence of the Golden Race".The Classical Quarterly. n.s.46 (2):434–446.doi:10.1093/cq/46.2.434.ISSN0009-8388.JSTOR639800.
^abDunning, Susan Bilynskyj (2022-06-06). "The transformation of thesaeculum and its rhetoric in the construction and rejection of Roman imperial power". In Faure, Richard; Valli, Simon-Pierre; Zucker, Arnaud (eds.).Conceptions of time in Greek and Roman antiquity. Berlin: De Gruyter.doi:10.1515/9783110736076-008.ISBN978-3-11-073607-6.
^Hall, John. F. III (1986). "The Saeculum Novum of Augustus and its Etruscan Antecedents". In Haase, Wolfgang (ed.).TheSaeculum novum of Augustus and its Etruscan Antecedents. Vol. 2. pp. 2564–2589.doi:10.1515/9783110841671-016.ISBN978-3-11-084167-1.{{cite book}}:|journal= ignored (help)
^Diehl, Ernst (1934). "Das ʻsaeculumʼ, seine Riten und Gebete: Teil II. Die ʻsaeculaʼ der Kaiserzeit. Ritual und Gebet der Feiern der Jahre 17 v. Chr., 88 und 204 n. Chr".Rheinisches Museum für Philologie. n.s.83 (4):348–372.ISSN0035-449X.JSTOR23079245.
