Latin poem by Pope Damasus, composed for the tomb of *Gorgonius (martyr of Rome, S00576) in the catacomb of Marcellinus and Petrus (ad duas lauros), via Labicana, Rome. Written in Rome, 366/384.
Evidence ID
E07177
Type of Evidence
Inscriptions - Formal inscriptions (stone, mosaic, etc.)
Literary - Poems
Major author/Major anonymous work
Damasan and pseudo-Damasan poems
Damasus, Epigrammata 32 (ICVR VI, 16962)
Martyris hic tumulus magno sub vertice montis
Gorgonium retinet servat qui altaria Christi.
hic quicumq(ue) venit sanctorum limina quaerat;
inveniet vicina in sede habitare beatos,
ad caelum pariter pietas quos vexit euntes.
Damasi episcopi
'This martyr’s tomb beneath the lofty peak of a hill
holds Gorgonius, who guards the altars of Christ.
Whoever comes here, let him seek the thresholds of the saints;
he will find that blessed ones dwell in the area roundabout,
whom at the same time piety sent sailing heavenward.
(verses) of Damasus the bishop'
Text and translation: Trout 2015, 136-7 (presentation of text lightly modified).
Cult PlacesBurial site of a saint - tomb/grave
Non Liturgical Activity
Burial site of a saint - tomb/grave
Burial site of a saint - cemetery/catacomb
Non Liturgical ActivityVisiting graves and shrines
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 (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: catacomb of Marcellinus and Petrus (ad duas lauros), on the via Labicana, just outside Rome to the east.Physical remains: none extant, but the inscribed tablet was preserved in the church of S. Martino ai Monti until the 17th century (Ferrua 1942, 166; Trout 2015, 137).
Manuscript transmission: Sylloge Laureshamensis IV, Sylloge Turonensis. Between the 15th and 17th centuries, when the inscription was on display in S. Martino ai Monti, it was copied in several manuscript collections of Roman inscriptions (Ferrua 1942, 166-7), one of which, by Petrus Sabinus (ob. c. 1500), was used by de Rossi (1888, 438). For a digitised drawing of the undamaged tablet by Philippus van Winghe (ob. 1592), from the manuscript Brussels, KBR, ms. 17872-73, see https://uurl.kbr.be/1772754 (fol. 14r).
The poem is in hexameters. Its lack of detail suggests that Damasus had little or no information about Gorgonius or the circumstances of his martyrdom (Trout 2015, 137). No Martyrdom or other account of his martyrdom is known. Unlike the other martyrs buried in the same cemetery (Marcellinus and Petrus, Tiburtius) his burial on the via Labicana is attested in the pre-Damasan Depositio martirum (E01052), while in the Notitia ecclesiarum urbis Romae (E00680) his tomb is said to be in an 'inner grotto' (in anteriore antro), further into the catacomb than Marcellinus and Petrus, suggesting to Trout 2015, 137, that Gorgonius may have been the first martyr buried there. He is depicted in a surviving fresco from the catacomb, together with Tiburtius and Marcellinus and Petrus (E05246). His tomb has not been identified by modern archaeology (Trout 2015, 137).
Sometime in the middle ages, the tablet bearing Damasus' poem, then still intact, was moved to the church of S. Martino ai Monti within the walls of Rome, where there are references to it being displayed on the wall near the main entrance (Ferrua 1942, 165). According to Ferrua, the last dated reference was in 1651, after which it disappeared. Ferrua conjectures that it was destroyed when the medieval church was reconstructed in the mid 17th century to give it its present, baroque form.
Bibliography
Editions and translation:de Rossi, G.B., Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae Septimo Saeculo Antiquiores, vol. 2.1 (Rome, 1888), 64, no. 13; 107, no. 52; 438, no. 120.
Ihm, M., Damasi epigrammata (Anthologiae Latinae Supplementa 1, Leipzig: Teubner, 1895), 36-37, no. 31.
Ferrua, A., Epigrammata damasiana (Rome: Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana, 1942), 165-166, no. 32.
de Rossi, G.B., and Ferrua, A., Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae Septimo Saeculo Antiquiores [ICVR], n.s., vol. 6: Coemeteria in Viis Latina, Lubicana et Praenestina (Vatican: Pont. Institutum Archaeologiae Christianae, 1975), no. 16962.
Reutter, U., Damasus, Bischof von Rom (366-384): Leben und Werk (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 96, no. 32.
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), 136-137, no. 32.
Epigraphic Database Bari, EDB2411
https://www.edb.uniba.it/epigraph/2411
Further reading:
Guyon, J., "L'oeuvre 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, vol. 7: Roma sotterranea cristiana (Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1987).
Lapidge, M., The Roman Martyrs: Introduction, Translation and Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
Record Created By
David Lambert, Katarzyna Wojtalik
Date of Entry
19/08/2020; revised 16/06/2025
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00576 | Gorgonius, martyr of Rome, buried on the via Labicana | Gorgonius | Certain |
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