Three fragments of a Latin verse inscription, probably by Pope Damasus commemorating *Marcus and Marcellianus (twin brothers, deacons and martyrs of Rome, S01401). Found in and around the church of SS. Cosma e Damiano in Rome, but probably originally from the cemetery of Marcus and Marcellianus on the via Ardeatina. Written in Rome, 366/384.
Evidence ID
E07164
Type of Evidence
Inscriptions - Formal inscriptions (stone, mosaic, etc.)
Literary - Poems
Major author/Major anonymous work
Damasan and pseudo-Damasan poems
Damasus, Epigrammata 13 (ICVR I, 272-3; IV 12521)
Fragment a (ICVR I, 273):
[con]posuit lau[des]
[ple]bs sancta
Fragment b (ICVR I, 272):
[...]us gener[...]
Fragment c (ICVR IV, 12521):
[an]imam casto semper
[...]is regni regi ae[...]
[...]s tenuit fratres do[...]
[...]m accipiet iungit
The underlined text in fragment (c) survives only in a copy made by Aldus Manutius (1449-1515).
Text: Trout 2015, 107.
Cult PlacesEcclesiastics - Popes
Cult Related Objects
Burial site of a saint - cemetery/catacomb
Non Liturgical ActivityRenovation and embellishment of cult buildings
RelicsTransfer, translation and deposition of relics
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - Popes
Ecclesiastics - lesser clergy
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: Probably the cemetery of Marcus and Marcellianus on the via Ardeatina, just outside Rome to the south. The fragments are now displayed at the catacombs of Domitilla on the via Ardeatina.Physical remains: Three fragments of an inscription in Philocalian lettering. They were found in the 1880s in or around the church of SS. Cosma e Damiano on the Roman Forum, but this cannot have been their original location since it did not become a church until the 6th century (see E01361). Fragment (a) was part of the paving of the church; fragments (b) and (c) were found in rubble accumulated in front of it (de Rossi 1888-89, 134; Trout 2015, 107). The whole inscription had evidently once been used as paving, and the letters are consequently worn. Measurements: (a) height 35 cm, width 50 cm; (b) height 43 cm, width 12 cm; (c) height 57 cm, width 24 cm; thickness 6.5 cm; height of letters 6–6.5 cm (Ferrua 1942, 114). For Ferrua's illustration, see Images; for a photograph of the fragments as currently displayed, see the EDB entry. Fragment (c) was seen and copied by the printer and renaissance humanist Aldus Manutius (1449-1515) at a time when more of it survived (text preserved only in his transcription is shown here underlined).
Manuscript transmission: none.
The surviving fragments of text are sufficient to show that the inscription was a poem in hexameters, but too little survives for any reconstruction to be more than speculative (for attempts by de Rossi and others, see Ihm 1895, 60-61).
The only indication of the identity of the saints commemorated is the appearance of the word fratres ('brothers'). When he first published the fragments (de Rossi 1888-89 and 1890), de Rossi suggested that the inscription commemorated *Iohannes and Paulus (S00384), but in 1899 Orazio Marucchi put forward a plausible case (Marucchi 1899, 16-19) that it commemorated Marcus and Marcellianus (S01401), twin brothers whose martyrdom is described in the Martyrdom of Sebastianus (E02512). Their shrine was originally located on the via Ardeatina in a cemetery named after them (Trout 2015, 102), and is attested in itineraries (E00684, E06991, E07893). Their bodies are known to have been in the church of Cosma e Damiano in later centuries (Marucchi 1899, 16); their translation there is undocumented, but can be assumed to have taken place during the general abandonment of suburban shrines during the 8th and 9th centuries. A fragment of Damasus' epitaph for his sister Irene (Epigrammata 11, Trout 2015, 103), who was originally buried in the cemetery of Marcus and Marcellianus, was also found at SS. Cosma e Damiano, in the same archaeological context.
Bibliography
Edition and translations:de Rossi, G.B., "Iscrizioni rinvenute dinanzi la chiesa dei SS. Cosma e Damiano nella via Sacra," Bullettino di archeologia cristiana, serie 4/anno 6 (1888-89), 134-145.
de Rossi, G.B., "Appendice ai frammenti del carme damasiano attribuito per congettura ai martiri Giovanni e Paolo," Bullettino di archeologia cristiana, serie 5/anno 1 (1890), 147-148.
Ihm, M., Damasi epigrammata (Anthologiae Latinae Supplementa 1, Leipzig: Teubner, 1895), 60-61, no. 59.
de Rossi, G.B., and Silvagni, A., Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae Septimo Saeculo Antiquiores [ICVR], n.s., vol. 1 (Rome, 1922), nos. 272-273.
Ferrua, A., Epigrammata damasiana (Rome: Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana, 1942), 114-116, no. 13.
de Rossi, G.B., and Ferrua, A. (eds.) Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae Septimo Saeculo Antiquiores [ICVR], n.s., vol. 4: Coemeteria inter Vias Appiam et Ardeatinam (Vatican: Pont. Institutum Archaeologiae Christianae, 1964), no. 12521.
Trout, D., Damasus of Rome: The Epigraphic Poetry. Introduction, Texts, Translations, and Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 107, no 13.
Epigraphic Database Bari, EDB29445, EDB35325, EDB35331
https://www.edb.uniba.it/epigraph/29445
https://www.edb.uniba.it/epigraph/35325
https://www.edb.uniba.it/epigraph/35331
Further reading:
Marucchi, O., "La Memoria dei santi Marco e Marcelliano nel cimitero di Domitilla e probabile attribuzione a questi martiri di un carme del Papa Damaso," Nuovo Bullettino di Archeologia Cristiana 5 (1899), 5-19.
Images
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The surviving fragments of the inscription (from Ferrua 1942, 115).
Record Created By
David Lambert
Date of Entry
New entry 05/07/2025, replacing an earlier entry.
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S01401 | Marcus and Marcellianus, twin brothers, deacons and martyrs of Rome, buried on the via Ardeatina | Uncertain |
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