Funeral Games for Caesar?

[john m roberts]

Does anyone know if funeral games were ever celebrated for Caesar? As his heir, it would have been Octavianus's duty to arrange for them. I haven't found any mention of them, though Augustus boasts in a late inscription of the games he put on in his own name, but he doesn't specify funeral games for Caesar.

[antiochus]

Servius (ad Eclogue 4 4), Cassius Dio (45 7); Pliny (Natural History 2 23 93-94); Plutarch (Caesar 69); Suetonius (Caesar 88), Virgil (Georgics 1 466-488) all mention the funeral games of Caesar.

[Nathan Ross]

Interesting - most of those quotes seem to relate more directly to the comet which appeared in daylight at the same time. Here's a book about the phenomenon:

The Comet of 44BC and Caesar's Funeral Games

Reading Dio, it seems that the games in question were not initially supposed to be funeral games for Caesar, but rather in honour of the completion of the temple of Venus, but the appearance of the comet (and, no doubt, some subtle propagandising) turned them into such in the popular consciousness:

After this came the festival appointed in honour of the completion of the temple of Venus, which some, while Caesar was still alive, had promised to celebrate, but were now holding in slight regard... so, to win the favour of the populace, he [Octavian] provided for it at his private expense, on the ground that it concerned him because of his family... When, however, a certain star during all those days appeared in the north toward evening, which some called a comet, claiming that it foretold the usual occurrences, while the majority, instead of believing it, ascribed it to Caesar, interpreting it to mean that he had become immortal and had been received into the number of the stars, Octavius then took courage and set up in the temple of Venus a bronze statue of him with a star above his head... (Dio, 44.6-7)