saeculum. The word carried two meanings: “a long human life,” and “a natural century,” approximating one hundred years. The word's etymology may be related to the Latin senectus (old age), sero (to plant), sequor (to follow), or some lost Etruscan root. Much of what we know about the saeculum comes from Varro (Augustus's librarian) via Censorinus, a Roman historian of the third century a.d. By then, Etruria had become a distant memory to a Rome that was itself weakening.
