Not to be confused with Juvenilia.
In classical antiquity, Juvenalia or Ludi Juvenales (in Greek language Ἱουβενάλια ὥσπερ τινὰ νεανισκεύματα) were the stage games instituted by Nero in the year 59, when he was 21 years old, in commemoration of the shaving of his beard for the first time time, thereby indicating that he had moved from youth to adulthood.
These games were not held in the circus, but in a private theater built as a kind of amusement park (nemus), where all kinds of theatrical performances, Greek and Roman games and mimesis or similar were given. >
It was expected that the most distinguished people of the state, old or young, men or women, would participate in them. The emperor himself set an example by appearing in person on stage. Dion Casio mentions the case of a distinguished Roman matron, who danced in games over eighty years old. Suetonius in his The Lives of the Twelve Caesars (Ner. 12), confuses these festivals with the Neronia, which were instituted a year later, year 60.
The Juvenalia continued to be celebrated by later emperors, but not on the same occasion. This name was given to the games that sponsored by the emperors, were celebrated the 1 of January of every year. They no longer consisted of stage representations, but in car races and battles of wild beasts (Dion Casio, Roman History, LXVII.14, Sidonio Apolinar, Carm. XXIII.307, 428, History of Augustus, "The Three Fatties", 4; cf. Lipsius, ad Tac. Ann. XIV.15).
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