Latin poem by Pope Damasus, for an inscription commemorating *Tarsicius (deacon and martyr of Rome, S02859) at his tomb in the cemetery of Callixtus, on the via Appia outside Rome. Written in Rome 366/384.
Evidence ID
E07165
Type of Evidence
Inscriptions - Formal inscriptions (stone, mosaic, etc.)
Literary - Poems
Major author/Major anonymous work
Damasan and pseudo-Damasan poems
Damasus, Epigrammata 15 (ICVR IV, 11078)
Par meritum quicumq(ue) legis cognosce duorum
quis Damasus rector titulos post praemia reddit.
Iudaicus populus Stephanum meliora monentem
perculerat saxis, tulerat qui ex hoste tropaeum:
martyrium primus rapuit levita fidelis. 5
Tarsicium sanctum Christi sacramenta gerentem
cum male sana manus premeret vulgare profanis,
ipse animam potius voluit dimittere caesus
prodere quam canibus rabidis caelestia membra.
‘You who read, whoever you are, recognize the equal merit of the two
to whom Damasus the bishop has dedicated this inscription after their rewards.
The Jewish people stoned Stephen when he was instructing them
on a better course, he who carried off the trophy from the enemy:
the faithful deacon first laid hold of martyrdom.
When a raving gang was pressing holy Tarsicius to reveal to the uninitiated
the sacraments of Christ that he was carrying,
he wished rather to release his spirit, struck down,
than to betray the heavenly limbs to mad dogs.’
Text and translation: Trout 2015, 111-112 (presentation of text lightly modified).
Cult PlacesEcclesiastics - Popes
Cult Related Objects
Burial site of a saint - cemetery/catacomb
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 (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; E01790; 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).
Discussion
Original location: cemetery of Callixtus, via Appia, just outside Rome to the south.Physical remains: none.
Manuscript transmission: Sylloge Laureshamensis IV.
Damasus' hexameter poem is the earliest surviving reference to Tarsicius. He is described as a deacon who was attacked and martyred while carrying the eucharistic bread; the implication is that it had been blessed by the pope and was being taken to be used during mass in one of Rome's tituli (parish churches), as was standard practice by Damasus' time. Tarsicius' office as a deacon inspired Damasus to compare him to the deacon Stephen, the first martyr (note that Damasus was writing before the discovery of Stephen's relics and the subsequent dramatic expansion of his cult – Trout 2015, 111 ).
Tarisicius never attracted significant cult and is not the subject of a martyrdom narrative in his own right, though he appears as a minor figure in the Martyrdom of Stephanus and Companions (E02514), which purports to narrate the martyrdom of Pope Stephen I (S00205) during the persecution of Valerian in 257, but was written only in the 6th or 7th century. Tarsicius' inclusion is almost certainly due to Damasus' poem: the account of his death follows the poem (with the added miracle that the consecrated bread miraculously disappears to prevent its profanation), but it also seems likely that he only appears in the Martyrdom because its author took the Stephen mentioned in the poem to be the pope rather than the Protomartyr (Lapidge 2018, 481); the error is explicable, since Pope Stephen was also buried in the cemetery of Callixtus. If the Martyrdom is discounted, there is no reason to associate Tarsicius with Stephen – Damasus gives no indication as to when his martyrdom took place. According to De locis sanctis (E06992), Tarsicius was buried in the same tomb (in uno tumulo) as Pope Zephyrinus (ob. 217), but this does not necessarily mean that they were contemporaries.
No physical trace of this tomb survives, but references in itineraries (E06992, E07892) show that it was in the cemetery of Callixtus. Various references to Zephyrinus' tomb in early sources indicate that it was a mausoleum above ground, rather than being within the catacomb. As described by Trout: 'The exact location is uncertain but is generally held to have been on the surface above the ancient third-century nucleus of the catacomb of S. Callisto known as Area 1, which contains the Crypt of the Popes (L1) as well as the Crypt of Caecilia' (Trout 2015, 112). For further discussion see the references given by Trout, and for an archaeological overview of the cemetery of Callixtus, see Spera 2004.
Bibliography
Editions and translations:de Rossi, G.B., Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae Septimo Saeculo Antiquiores, vol. 2.1 (Rome, 1888), 109, no. 62.
Ihm, M., Damasi epigrammata (Anthologiae Latinae Supplementa 1, Leipzig: Teubner, 1895), 21-22, no. 14.
Ferrua, A., Epigrammata damasiana (Rome: Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana, 1942), 117-119, no. 15.
de Rossi, G.B., and Ferrua, A., 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. 11078.
Reutter, U., Damasus, Bischof von Rom (366-384): Leben und Werk (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 84-85, no. 15.
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), 111-113, no. 15.
Epigraphic Database Bari, EDB39523
https://www.edb.uniba.it/epigraph/39523
Further reading:
Lapidge, M., The Roman Martyrs: Introduction, Translation and Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 477-482, 640.
Spera, L., "Cal(l)isti Coemeterium (Via Appia)," in: A. La Regina (ed.), Lexicon topographicum urbis Romae – Suburbium, vol. 2 (Rome: Quasar, 2004), 32-44.
Record Created By
David Lambert, Katarzyna Wojtalik
Date of Entry
29/06/2020; revised 02/07/2025
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00030 | Stephen, the First Martyr | Stephanus | Certain | S02859 | Tarsicius, deacon and martyr of Rome, buried on the via Appia | Tarsicius | Certain |
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