The meaning of the Latin term _saeculum_ has transformed over time. Initially, it was used convey the time duration of a human lifespan—either a generation or the hundred-year maximum one might hope to live. Eventually, the word evolved to encompass the boundaries of collective memory. From Rome's foundation through Constantine's era, Romans celebrated the passing of each _saeculum_ with extraordinary games—events described as spectacles "such as no one had ever witnessed, nor ever would again." This was why the theologian Augustine of Hippo, looking for a word to counterpoint the unchanging eternity of the City of God, had seized upon it. Things caught up in the flux of mortals' existence, bounded by their memories, forever changing upon the passage of the generations: all these, so Augustine declared, were _saecularia_—'secular things'. _Secularia_ is a personal space for contemplating the ephemeral, the value of what passes within human memory, and the meaning we create within the boundaries of our temporal existence.