[4] During the reign of Antoninus Pius, they were held every five years from 140 to 160 AD, within a period beginning on the day after the Ides of May and continuing through the Kalends of June.
They were established in response to an epidemic (magna … pestilentia) afflicting pregnant women, caused by the distribution of the flesh of sacrificial bulls (tauri) among the people.
[18] Servius gives an alternative version that credits the Sabines with instituting the games in response to the pestilentia, and characterizes the transferral of the lues publica (the plague upon the people) onto sacrificial victims (hostiae) as if it were a scapegoat ritual.
[21] A reconstruction dating back to J.J. Scaliger[22] has been taken to mean that youths, under the direction of a coach, engaged in ritual gymnastics on a raw bull's hide, perhaps to be compared to exercises on a trampoline.
[24] The Augustan historian Livy has a brief reference to the games as occurring in 186 BC per biduum, for a period of two days, religionis causa, "for the sake of religious scruple."
[25] Earlier scholars have sometimes taken the adjective taurii to mean that bulls were part of the games, either in a Mediterranean tradition of bull-leaping, or as an early form of bullfighting.
[26] Because Livy's chronology places the Ludi Taurii (or in some editions Taurilia) immediately after the news of a victory in Roman Spain, the games have figured in a few efforts to trace the early history of Spanish-style bullfighting.