Saeculum
A  is a length of time roughly equal to the potential lifetime of a person or, equivalently, the complete renewal of a human population. Background
Originally it meant the time from the moment that something happened (for example the founding of a city) until the point in time that all people who had lived at the first moment had died. At that point a new  would start. According to legend, the gods had allotted a certain number of  to every people or civilization; the Etruscans, for example, had been given ten saecula. By the 2nd century BC, Roman historians were using the  to periodize their chronicles and track wars. At the time of the reign of emperor Augustus, the Romans decided that a  was 110 years. In 17 BC, Caesar Augustus organized Ludi saeculares ("saecular games") for the first time to celebrate the "fifth saeculum of Rome". Augustus aimed to link the  with imperial authority. Emperors such as Claudius and Septimius Severus celebrated the passing of  with games at irregular intervals. In 248, Philip the Arab combined Ludi saeculares with the 1,000th anniversary of the founding of Rome. The new millennium that Rome entered was called the saeculum novum, a term that received a metaphysical connotation in Christianity, referring to the worldly age (hence "secular"). Roman emperors legitimised their political authority by referring to the  in various media, linked to a golden age of imperial glory. In response, Christian writers began to define the  as referring to 'this present world', as opposed to the expectation of eternal life in the 'world to come'. This results in the modern sense of 'secular' as 'belonging to the world and its affairs'. The English word secular, an adjective meaning something happening once in an eon, is derived from the Latin saeculum. The descendants of Latin saeculum in the Romance languages generally mean "century" (i.e., 100 years): French siècle, Spanish siglo, Portuguese século, Italian secolo, etc. See also 
Aeon, comparable Greek concept 
Century
Generation
In saecula saeculorum
 New world order (politics)
Social cycle theory
Strauss–Howe generational theory
Saeculum obscurum

References

Units of time
Ageing
Latin words and phrases