Latin poem by Pope Damasus, for an inscription commemorating *Nereus and Achilleus (eunuchs and martyrs of Rome, S00403) at their shrine in the catacomb of Domitilla, on the via Ardeatina outside Rome. Written in Rome, 366/384.
Evidence ID
E07153
Type of Evidence
Inscriptions - Formal inscriptions (stone, mosaic, etc.)
Literary - Poems
Major author/Major anonymous work
Damasan and pseudo-Damasan poems
Damasus, Epigrammata 8 (ICVR III, 8132)
Text in underlined capitals survives in fragments of the original inscription.
Nereus and Achilleus martyres
Militiae nomen dederant saevumQ(ue) gerebant
officium, pariter spectantes iussa TYranni,
praeceptis pulsante metu serviRE PARati.
mira fides rerum: subito posueRE FURORE(m),
CONversi fugiunt, ducis inpia castrA RELINQUUNT,
PROIciunt clipeos, faleras telAQ(ue) CRUENTA,
CONFEssi gaudent Christi portaRE TRIUMFOS.
CREDITE Per Damasum possit quid GLORIA CHRISTI.
‘Nereus and Achilleus martyrs
They had enlisted for military service and were performing their
cruel duty, in like manner attentive to the tyrant’s commands,
ready to obey orders, compelled by fear.
Marvelous yet true! Suddenly they laid aside their fury;
converted they fled; they abandoned the commander’s wicked camp.
They flung away their shields, their decorations, and their bloody weapons.
Having confessed, they rejoiced to carry the triumphs of Christ.
Believe through Damasus what the glory of Christ can achieve.’
Text and translation: Trout 2015, 98.
Cult PlacesConstruction of cult buildings
Protagonists in Cult and Narratives
Burial site of a saint - tomb/grave
Non Liturgical ActivityConstruction of cult buildings
Renovation and embellishment of cult buildings
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - Popes
Cult Related ObjectsInscription
Source
The poems of DamasusThe poetry of Damasus is the first substantial corpus of texts devoted specifically to the cult of saints. All but a handful of his surviving poems were written to be inscribed on stone and displayed at the tombs of the martyrs. The installation of these inscriptions formed part of a programme of monumentalisation of the sites of martyr cult, most of which originated as ordinary tombs in the cemeteries and catacombs around the city of Rome, and it was often accompanied by major remodelling and rebuilding of the tombs and their physical surroundings (see Trout 2015, 42-47). The poems were inscribed on marble plaques with distinctive lettering ('Philocalian script') by the calligrapher Furius Dionysius Filocalus (Trout 2015, 47-52). This characteristic script makes it possible to identify fragments of inscribed text as Damasan even when the surviving remains are too small and fragmentary for the content of the inscription to be reconstructed.
Damasus' poems are of great importance for the history of saints' cult at Rome because, aside from what their content tells us, they are securely datable to his papacy (366-384). If a martyr is the subject of a poem by Damasus, it means that their cult was established and formally recognised at Rome no later than the early 380s; the only comparable, but much briefer, material is that in the Chronography of 354 (E01051, E01052). By contrast, the surviving Roman saints' lives are of very uncertain date and in most cases much later than Damasus' poems (which they sometimes used as a source: Lapidge 2018, 637-8).
It is certain that most material in the Damasan corpus is by Damasus himself, either because the inscribed text (or fragments of it) survives, or because Damasus refers to himself in the poem (which he does frequently). In other cases his authorship has been assigned on stylistic grounds. Since Damasus' style is quite distinctive (see Trout 2015, 16-26), this can usually be done reasonably securely, but there are a few instances where there is disagreement among editors as to whether poems are genuinely by Damasus (see E07149; E07190; E07503).
Survival of the poems
Only two of Damasus' inscriptions on the martyrs have survived more or less intact, those to Eutychius (E07169) and Agnes (E07189); a few others exist in fragments substantial enough to piece together most or all of the text, including the inscription from the crypt of the popes in the catacomb of St Sebastian (E01866), and the poem to Felicissimus and Agapitus (E07170). But most of his poems either do not survive at all in their inscribed form, or do so only in small fragments of a few words or letters. Their survival is the result of their inclusion in syllogae – collections of inscriptions from the martyr shrines and churches of Rome, which were transcribed by pilgrims and then circulated in manuscript. The earliest syllogae seem to have been compiled in the 7th century, at the same time as the earliest pilgrim itineraries, and like the itineraries they were organised geographically, following the routes used by pilgrims around the city and its suburbs. Poems by Damasus therefore appear scattered through the collections according to their location.
No sylloge survives in its original form: those now extant were compiled from earlier manuscript collections (whose traces are sometimes evident in their structure). They were edited by de Rossi in vol. 2.1 of the first edition of ICUR (1888), which remains the only modern edition of the syllogae as such (as opposed to the individual poems they contain). For a descriptive account of the syllogae containing Damasus’ poems, see Trout 2015, 63-65; more briefly, Lapidge 2018, 638. The most important syllogae for the transmission of Damasus' poems are as follows:
The Sylloge Laureshamensis. A manuscript produced at the monastery of Lorsch in the 9th/10th c., now in the Vatican Library (Vatican, Pal. Lat. 833; digitised: digi.vatlib.it/view/bav_pal_lat_833). De Rossi believed it was a compilation of four existing collections, which he denoted as follows: Laureshamensis I (de Rossi 1888, 144-153), dating from the 9th c. (ibid. 142); Laureshamensis II (de Rossi 1888, 126-130), from the 7th c. (ibid. 124); Laureshamensis III (de Rossi 1888, 161-173), a collection of inscriptions from northern Italy, dating from the late 8th c. (ibid. 160); and Laureshamensis IV (de Rossi 1888, 98-118), dating from the 7th c. (ibid. 97), and the one that contains most of the Damasan material.
The Sylloge Centulensis (de Rossi 1888, 78-94). Produced in the monastery of St. Riquier in the 9th/10th century, held for most of its existence in Corbie, and now in the Russian National Library at St. Petersburg (Codex Petropolitanus F XIV 1).
The Sylloge Turonensis (de Rossi 1888, 62-71). Produced at Tours in the 7th century, but surviving only in two manuscripts from 11th/12th-century Austria (Klosterneuburg Stiftsbibliothek Cod. 723; Göttweig Stiftsbibliothek Cod. 64 (78), digitised: manuscripta.at/diglit/AT2000-64).
The Sylloge Virdunensis (de Rossi 1888, 134-141). Produced at Verdun in the 10th century (Bibliothèque de Verdun, ms. 45; digitised: www1.arkhenum.fr/bm_verdun_ms/_app/index.php?type_recherche=cote&choix_secondaire=Ms. 45).
The Sylloge Einsidelnensis (de Rossi 1888, 18-33). Produced at the monastery of Einsiedeln in the 9th century (Einsiedeln, Stiftsbibliothek 326, digitised: www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/sbe/0326).
Edition and formatting
Our entries use the edition of Damasus' epigrams by Dennis Trout (Oxford University Press, 2015). In his Latin text, Trout uses lower case to indicate material transmitted only in manuscript and upper case to indicate letters which survive on stone. We have used standard capitalisation, with material from inscribed fragments in underlined upper case. Apart from this, both text and translation follow Trout unless otherwise indicated.
Discussion
Original location: Catacomb of Domitilla, via Ardeatina, just outside Rome to the south.Physical remains: Two fragments of the original inscription were discovered in the 1870s, during the excavation of the catacomb of Domitilla. Text surviving in these fragments is indicated by underlined capitals in our text of the poem: for the originals, see Images (multiple photographs can also be found in the inscription's EDB entry). Measurements: left fragment – height 62 cm, width 62; right fragment – height 80 cm, width 85 cm; thickness over 5 cm; height of letters 6 cm (Ferrua 1942, 101). The fragments are currently displayed in the basilica of Nereus and Achilleus in the Catacomb of Domitilla.
Manuscript transmission: Syllogae Laureshamensis IV, Sylloge Turonensis, Sylloge Einsidelnensis.
Damasus' eight-line hexameter poem is the earliest surviving evidence for Nereus and Achilleus. In the poem they are portrayed – with considerable emphasis – as soldiers. This is in stark contrast to the later tradition, represented by the Martyrdom of Nereus and Achilleus (E02033), of uncertain date but probably no earlier than the mid 5th century, according to which they were eunuchs, and domestic servants in the household of Domitilla.
The shrine of Nereus and Achilleus was in the catacomb of Domitilla, one of the oldest and largest of the cemetery complexes around Rome. It took its name from the Roman noblewoman of the early imperial period, on whose estate it was established (Lapidge 2018, 203-4), and who (or a legendary version of whom) would be linked with Nereus and Achilleus in their passio (see E02033). By the 6th century a large semi-subterranean basilica with three naves had been constructed around their tombs, which were incorporated into its apse area. Whether this was constructed by Damasus, or whether he was responsible for a smaller-scale monumentalisation of the shrine which was expanded at a later period, is something that remains uncertain: for a summary, with references to the substantial literature on the topic, see Trout 2015, 99-100. The basilica was a popular pilgrimage site until the 9th century (see E00684, E06912, E06991, E07893), but was then abandoned; by the 19th century all trace of it above ground had disappeared (Lapidge 2018, 204). It was excavated by de Rossi in the 1870s, and subsequently reconstructed; the fragments of Damasus' inscription were found during this excavation. De Rossi's excavation also found a pillar, perhaps from a ciborium, with a carving of the beheading of Achilleus and the name ACILLEVS, which may be from the reconstruction of the shrine by Damasus (EDB 24865, $E###). For more detail on the archaeology of the site, see Fasola 2002 and Pergola 1986 and 2004.
Bibliography
Editions and translations:de Rossi, G.B., Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae Septimo Saeculo Antiquiores, vol. 2.1 (Rome, 1888), 31, no. 74; 67, no. 28; 101, no. 20.
Ihm, M., Damasi epigrammata (Anthologiae Latinae Supplementa 1, Leipzig: Teubner, 1895), 12, no. 8.
Diehl, E., Inscriptiones Latinae Christianae Veteres, vol. 1 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1925), 390, no. 1981.
Ferrua, A., Epigrammata damasiana (Rome: Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana, 1942), 101-104, no. 8.
de Rossi, G.B., and Ferrua, A. (eds.) Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae Septimo Saeculo Antiquiores [ICVR], n.s., vol. 3: Coemeteria in via Ardeatina cum duabus appendicibus (Vatican: Pont. Institutum Archaeologiae Christianae, 1956), no. 8132.
Reutter, U., Damasus, Bischof von Rom (366-384): Leben und Werk (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 83-84, no. 8.
Aste, A., Gli epigrammi di papa Damaso I (Tricase: Libellula Edizioni, 2014).
Trout, D., Damasus of Rome: The Epigraphic Poetry. Introduction, Texts, Translations, and Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 98-100, no. 8.
Epigraphic Database Bari, EDB24864
https://www.edb.uniba.it/epigraph/24864
Further reading:
Fasola, U.M., The Catacombs of Domitilla and the Basilica of the Martyrs Nereus and Achilleus, 3rd ed., trans. C.S. Houston and F. Barbarito (Rome, 2002).
Lapidge, M., The Roman Martyrs: Introduction, Translation and Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 201-210, 639.
Pergola, P., "Nereus et Achilleus martyres: L'intervention de Damase à Domitille (avec un appendice sur les résultats des fouilles récentes de la Basilique de Damase à Generosa)," in: Saecularia Damasiana. Atti del convegno internazilonale per il XVI centenario della morte di Papa Damaso I (11-12-384–10/12-12-1984) (Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana, 1986), 203-224.
Pergola, P., "Domitillae coemeterium," "Domitillae praedium," in: A. La Regina (ed.), Lexicon topographicum urbis Romae – Suburbium, vol. 2 (Rome: Quasar, 2004) 203-207.
Images
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Left hand fragment of Damasus' inscription to Nereus and Achilleus (reproduced from Ferrua 1942, 102).
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Right hand fragment of Damasus' inscription to Nereus and Achilleus (reproduced from Ferrua 1942, 102).
Record Created By
David Lambert
Date of Entry
New entry 01/07/2025, replacing an earlier entry.
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00403 | Nereus and Achilleus, eunuchs and martyrs of Rome, and companions | Nereus, Achilleus | Certain |
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