ABSTRACT
Games held in a portico, or in a piazza like the Circus Flaminius, were not ludi circenses with chariot racing. Theatrical performances would be possible, and perhaps a small-scale venatio, but these local games were clearly on a less ambitious scale than the series of great annual ludi entrusted to the aediles. The Victoria games celebrated the battle of the Colline Gate, which could quite reasonably be presented as a victory over an external enemy. If the Hercules games were associated with civil war campaigns, or with victories over allies who accepted the Roman citizenship in 89, one can imagine hostile tribunes not wanting the spilling of citizen blood to be publicly commemorated. Since the inscription from the Via Appia specifies Hercules Magnus as the recipient of games, it is reasonable to infer that the games were set up at the same time as the temple, as had happened a century earlier with the Magna Mater and the ludi Megalenses.
