Latin poem by Pope Damasus, for an inscription commemorating the martyrdom of *Marcellinus and Petrus (priest and exorcist, martyrs of Rome, S00577) at their tomb in the cemetery of Marcellinus and Petrus (ad duas lauros), via Labicana, Rome. Written in Rome, 366/384.
Evidence ID
E07172
Type of Evidence
Inscriptions - Formal inscriptions (stone, mosaic, etc.)
Literary - Poems
Major author/Major anonymous work
Damasan and pseudo-Damasan poems
Damasus, Epigrammata 28 (ICVR VI, 16961)
Text in underlined capitals is preserved in the surviving fragments of the inscription.
Marcelline tuum pariter Petriq(ue) sepulcrum
percussor retulit Damaso mihi cum puer essem:
haec sibl CArnificem rabidum mandata dedisse,
sentibus IN Mediis vestra ut tunc colla secaret,
ne tumulum Vestrum quisquam cognoscere posset. 5
vos alacres vestris MANibus fodisse sepulcra,
candidule occultoS POST quae iacuisse sub antro;
postea commonitAM VEstra pietate Lucillam
hic placuisse magis saNCTIssima condere membra.
5. tumulVm vestrum EDB
‘Marcellinus, (the story of) your grave and likewise Peter’s
an executioner told to me, Damasus, when I was a boy:
A savage butcher (he said) had given him these orders—
that he straightaway sever your necks in a wild thicket
so that no one could recognize your tomb.
You (he said) had cheerfully dug your graves with your own hands,
which afterwards had simply lain hidden below a cavern.
Thereafter Lucilla, alerted through your kindness,
was pleased to set your most holy limbs in this place.’
Text and translation: Trout 2015, 132, taking account of text in EDB entry.
Cult PlacesBurial site of a saint - tomb/grave
Non Liturgical ActivityRenovation and embellishment of cult buildings
RelicsBodily relic - unspecified
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - Popes
Cult Related Objects
Burial site of a saint - tomb/grave
Burial site of a saint - cemetery/catacomb
Non Liturgical ActivityRenovation and embellishment of cult buildings
Oral transmission of saint-related stories
RelicsBodily relic - unspecified
Transfer, translation and deposition of relics
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - Popes
Women
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 Marcellinus and Petrus (ad duas lauros), via Labicana, just outside Rome to the east.Physical remains: In 1913 several small conjoining fragments of the inscription were found in an ancient cistern in the cloister of the church of SS. Quattro Coronati (Ferrua 1942, 160; Trout 2015, 133). When assembled (see Images), their measurements are height 51 cm, width 31 cm; height of letters, 6 cm (Ferrua 1942, 160). They are now displayed on the wall of the cloister. The text is from lines 6-9. In the 1990s four new fragments were discovered there, with text from lines 3-5 (Trout 2015, 133; published in Pugliese 1998). Another small fragment was discovered in 2012 (Giuliani and Pugliese 2019): photograph in the inscription's EDB entry. Letters from the recovered fragments are shown in our text in underlined capitals.
Manuscript transmission: The poem is not included in any of the epigraphic syllogae, but is quoted in its entirety in the Martyrdom of Marcellinus and Petrus, which survives in more than ninety manuscripts (see E02500).
The poem is in hexameters. It is the first surviving reference to Marcellinus and Petrus. Damasus' account of their martyrdom is unusually detailed compared to most of his poems, and includes the striking claim that when he was a boy it was described to him by their executioner. There is no way to determine the factual basis of this, though it has often been taken as reliable by historians (see e.g. Guyon 1987, 119-20, where the historicity of Damasus' claim and of the poem's account of the martyrdom are accepted without question). A possible point in its favour is its atypicality in Damasus' works: his poems are usually frustratingly lacking in specifics, raising the question of why, if he was willing to invent such a striking scenario here, he did not do so elsewhere; in the end, however, we have no way of knowing. If the details in the poem are reliable, it would date the martyrdom of Marcellinus and Petrus to the persecution of Diocletian and Maximian at the beginning of the 4th century (another late 4th-century text, the Prologus paschae ad Vitalem, E07120, explicitly assigns their deaths to this persecution). The information that the two martyrs were executed and buried in 'a thicket' (sentibus in mediis) also depends on the executioner's testimony, while the detail that they were subsequently reburied in the catacomb by a woman named Lucilla is added by Damasus in his own persona. This is the earliest known reference to the bodies of martyrs being retrieved and buried by a woman named Lucilla (or, more frequently, Lucina), a repeated scenario in later Roman hagiography (see Cooper 1999).
At some point between the 5th and 7th centuries, an anonymous Roman author produced a literary martyrdom narrative, the Martyrdom of Marcellinus and Petrus (E02500). While the greater part is clearly invented by the author, its account of the execution of the two martyrs (§§ 11-14) is based on Damasus' poem, which the author quotes in full to provide a guarantee of veracity (thus ensuring its survival). Some aspects of the later tradition about Marcellinus and Petrus, notably their status as a presbyter and an exorcist, appear for the first time in the Martyrdom.
Damasus' poem was originally inscribed at the tomb of Marcellinus and Peter in the catacomb on the via Labicana known as Ad duas lauros ('At the two laurel trees'). The Notitia ecclesiarum urbis Romae (E00680) states that the tomb was encountered close to the entrance of the catacomb, before that of Gorgonius, which was further in. Together with Tiburtius and Gorgonius, they are depicted in a surviving fresco in the catacomb (E05246). Their tomb was investigated during excavations carried out at the catacomb by Jean Guyon in the 1970s and 1980s (Guyon 1986, 228-38; 1987, 381-97). Originally dating from the early 4th century, it was heavily reconstructed by Damasus; in Trout's summary: 'Damasus monumentalized the tomb’s façade by installing flanking pilasters and an ornamental arch, adding a free-standing mensa [...], and most likely provided a new direct-access stairway' (Trout 2015, 133). The inscription would have been attached to the wall in the immediate vicinity of the tomb (for Guyon's reconstruction, see Images). At a later period, probably the late 6th century, the area around the tombs was converted into a basilica ad corpus, involving the removal of most of Damasus' monumentalisation and leaving the tombs largely free-standing in the middle of the room (Trout 2015, 133; Guyon 1987, 439-55).
Though other martyrs – Tiburtius (S01404), Gorgonius (S00576), the Four Crowned Martyrs (S00685) – were buried in the cemetery ad duas lauros, Marcellinus and Petrus were the most prominent, to the extent that it eventually came to be known by their names (see e.g. E01443, E06912). However, unlike Damasus' poems on Tiburtius (E07174) and Gorgonius (E07177), the one on Marcellinus and Petrus does not appear in any of the syllogae and survives only because of its fortuitous inclusion in the Martyrdom of Marcellinus and Petrus. It must have disappeared from public view in the catacomb by the time the syllogae began to be compiled in the 7th century, though obviously it survived long enough to be copied by the author of the Martyrdom, whose date is uncertain (and indeed partly depends on when the inscription is thought to have disappeared). The traditional explanation for its disappearance is that it was destroyed by the Goths during their sieges of Rome in the 530s and 540s (Ihm 1895, 34; Ferrua 1942, 160; Trout 2015, 132-3; Lapidge 2018, 439). This is plausible in principle, since the Goths did cause damage to cemeteries around Rome, which is recorded in various sources (see e.g. E07580), but is not actually attested in any source; it has been suggested that it was instead removed or destroyed during rebuilding that took place at the cemetery in the early 7th century (see discussion in E02500).
Bibliography
Editions and translations:Ihm, M., Damasi epigrammata (Anthologiae Latinae Supplementa 1, Leipzig: Teubner, 1895), 34-36, no. 29.
Ferrua, A., Epigrammata damasiana (Rome: Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana, 1942), 160-162, no. 28.
De Rossi, G.B., Ferrua, A. (eds.) Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae Septimo Saeculo Antiquiores, n.s., vol. 6: Coemeteria in Viis Latina, Lubicana et Praenestina (Vatican: Pont. Institutum Archaeologiae Christianae, 1975), no. 16961.
Reutter, U., Damasus, Bischof von Rom (366-384): Leben und Werk (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 81, no. 28.
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), 132-133, no. 28.
Epigraphic Database Bari, EDB2410
https://www.edb.uniba.it/epigraph/2410
Further reading:
Cooper, K., "The martyr, the matrona and the bishop: the matron Lucina and the politics of martyr cult in fifth- and sixth-century Rome," Early Medieval Europe 8:3 (1999), 297-317.
Giuliani, R., and Pugliese, R., "Nuovi dati archeologici sui lavori di papa Damaso alle tombe dei martiri Pietro e Marcellino ad duas lauros," Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana 95 (2019), 99-114.
Guyon, J., "L’œuvre de Damase dans le cimetière ‘aux deux lauriers’ sur la via Labicana," in: Saecularia Damasiana: Atti del convegno internazionale 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), 225-258.
Guyon, J., Le Cimetière aux deux lauriers: Recherches sur les catacombes Romaines (Rome: École française de Rome, 1987).
Guyon, J., "Duas lauros (inter), coemeterium," in: A. La Regina (ed.), Lexicon topographicum urbis Romae – Suburbium, vol. 2 (Rome: Quasar, 2004), 209–215.
Guyon, J., "SS. Marcellini et Petri basilica," in: A. La Regina (ed.), Lexicon topographicum urbis Romae – Suburbium, vol. 4 (Rome, Quasar: 2006), 19-25.
Lapidge, M., The Roman Martyrs: Introduction, Translation and Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
Pugliese, R., "SS. Quattro Coronati: Un nuovo frammento d’iscrizione damasiana recentemente rinvenuto," Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma 99 (1998), 238-242.
Images
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Reconstruction of the graves of Marcellinus and Petrus as embellished by Damasus. The mensa on the left is still in situ; the ornamental arch is hypothetical, based on pilasters and fragments found on site; as is the precise location of the inscribed poem (from Guyon 1987, fig. 224).
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The fragments of the inscription found in 1913 (text from ll. 6-9). (Ferrua 1942, p. 61)
Record Created By
David Lambert
Date of Entry
10/07/2025
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00577 | Marcellinus and Petrus, priest and exorcist, martyrs of Rome, buried on the via Labicana | Marcellinus, Petrus | Certain |
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