Decennalia
Decennalia or DECENNIA, a festival celebrated with games every ten years by the Roman emperors. This festival owed its origin to the fact that Augustus refused the supreme power when offered to him for his life, and would only consent to accept it for ten years; and when these expired, for another period of ten years, and so on to the end of his life. The memory of this comedy, as Gibbon has happily called it, was preserved to the last ages of the empire by the festival of the Decennalia, which was solemnised by subsequent emperors every tenth year of their reign, although they had received the imperium for life, and not for the limited period of ten years. (D. C. 53.16, 54.12, 58.24, 76.1; Trebell. Poll. Salonin. 3, Gallien. 7. Cf. Eichstaedt, Opusc. Acad. 208 ff.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.