Latin poem by Pope Damasus, for an inscription commemorating *Felix and Philippus (the second and third sons of Felicitas, martyr of Rome, S00525) at their tomb in the cemetery of Priscilla, via Salaria Nova, Rome. Written in Rome 366/384.
Evidence ID
E07190
Type of Evidence
Inscriptions - Formal inscriptions (stone, mosaic, etc.)
Literary - Poems
Major author/Major anonymous work
Damasan and pseudo-Damasan poems
Damasus, Epigrammata 39 (ICVR IX, 24829)
Qui natum passumq(ue) deum repetisse paternas
sedes adq(ue) iterum venturum ex aethere credit,
iudicet ut vivos rediens pariterq(ue) sepultos,
martyribus sanctis pateat quod regia caeli
respicit interior, sequitur si praemia Christi. 5
cultores domini Felix pariterq(ue) Philippus
hinc virtute pares contempto principe mundi,
aeternam petiere domum regnaque piorum,
sanguine quod proprio christi meruere coronas.
his Damasus supplex voluit sua reddere vota. 10
‘He who believes that a god who was born and suffered, regained
his paternal home and will come again from heaven,
returning to judge both the living and the buried,
understands that the inner reaches of the palace of heaven
lie open to the holy martyrs, if he seeks to obtain Christ’s rewards.
Worshippers of the Lord, Felix and Philippus equally so,
well matched in courageous disdain for the prince of the world,
secured an everlasting home and the realms of the righteous,
because with their own blood they earned the crowns of Christ.
To these Damasus, a suppliant, desired to repay his vows.’
Text and translation: Trout 2015, 155-156.
Cult Places
Burial site of a saint - tomb/grave
Non Liturgical ActivityRenovation 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: basilica of Silvester, cemetery of Priscilla, via Salaria nova, just outside Rome to the north.Physical remains: none.
Manuscript transmission: Sylloge Turonensis, Sylloge Virdunensis.
Felix and Philippus are first attested in the Depositio martirum of 354 (E01052), in which their burial place is given simply as the cemetery of Priscilla. It is likely, though not documented, that they were originally buried in the catacombs there. By the time the pilgrim itineraries were composed in the 7th century, their tomb was in the basilica of Silvester, which was built above ground at the cemetery. It was originally constructed by Pope Silvester I (ob. 335), and became a church of major significance, containing the tombs of several popes and a number of martyrs (see E06998, E07887, and in particular E00637, which describes the layout of the tombs in the basilica). In the Sylloge Turonensis the epitaph of Felix and Philippus is copied together with two others from the basilica, of Pope Marcellus, also by Damasus (E07191), and Pope Celestine I (ob. 432; E07530). The basilica of Silvester was abandoned after those buried there were translated to intramural churches in the 8th century: no remains now survive above foundation level (see Trout 2015, 157; Giuliani 2008). We thus have no physical context for Damasus' inscriptions there. It is possible that the installation of Damasus' poem on Felix and Philippus accompanied the translation of their remains from an original tomb in the catacomb, but this can only be a plausible hypothesis.
Damasus' epitaph is in hexameters, and in both manuscript collections it is presented as a single ten-line poem. However, de Rossi believed that only lines 6-10 constituted Damasus' epitaph for Felix and Philippus (de Rossi 1888, 62; originally and at greater length, de Rossi 1880, 43-6), and that lines 1-5, with their non-specific content, had become attached to their epitaph in error. He suggested they had been copied from a painting or mosaic in the basilica of Silvester. Ihm followed de Rossi and printed the transmitted text as two separate poems, nos. 47 (ll. 6-10) and 91 (ll. 1-5) – the latter in his section of 'Pseudodamasiana'. Ferrua, however, insisted that the ten lines were a single poem composed by Damasus (Ferrua 1942, 179-80), arguing that the opening lines have thematic unity with what follows, and emphasising that in the Sylloge Virdunensis the entire ten-line poem is headed 'Epitaph of the holy martyrs Felix and Philippus' (Epitaphium sanctorum Felicis et Philippi martyrum). Subsequent scholars have generally, though not universally, followed Ferrua; for further discussion and references, see Trout 2015, 156-7.
Felix and Philippus were later regarded as being among the seven sons of *Felicitas (S00525), in a narrative that first appears in the Martyrdom of Felicitas and Her Seven Sons (E02494), probably dating from the early 5th century. Whether the story put forward in the Martyrdom was known to Damasus remains unclear: in his poem they are not said to be brothers, nor to be related to any other martyrs (noted by Lapidge 2018, 45-47 and 646), although another, fragmentary poem by Damasus seems to indicate that he knew at least a version of the story (see E07192).
Bibliography
Editions and translations:de Rossi, G.B., Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae Septimo Saeculo Antiquiores, vol. 2.1 (Rome, 1888), 62, nos. 2-3; 138, nos. 23-24.
Ihm, M., Damasi epigrammata (Anthologiae Latinae Supplementa 1, Leipzig: Teubner, 1895), 94-95, no. 91 (second half); 50-51, no. 47 (first half).
Diehl, E., Inscriptiones Latinae Christianae Veteres, vol. 1 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1925), 380, no. 1957 (first half only).
Ferrua, A., Epigrammata damasiana (Rome: Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana, 1942), 179-181, no. 39.
de Rossi, G.B., and Ferrua, A., Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae Septimo Saeculo Antiquiores [ICVR], n.s., vol. 9: Viae Salariae coemeteria reliqua (Vatican: Pont. Institutum Archaeologiae Christianae, 1983), no. 24829.
Reutter, U., Damasus, Bischof von Rom (366-384): Leben und Werk (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 89, no. 39.
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), 155-157, no. 39.
Epigraphic Database Bari, EDB14198
https://www.edb.uniba.it/epigraph/14198
Further reading:
de Rossi, G.B., "Escavazioni e scoperte nel cimitero di Priscilla," Bullettino di archeologia cristiana, Serie 3: Anno 5 (1880), 5-54.
Giuliani, R., "Priscillae coemeterium," in: A. La Regina (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae – Suburbium, vol. 4 (Rome: Quasar, 2006), 262-269.
Giuliani, R., "Silvestri ecclesia, basilica," in: A. La Regina (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae – Suburbium, vol. 5 (Rome: Quasar, 2008), 86-90.
Lapidge, M., The Roman Martyrs: Introduction, Translations, and Commentary (Oxford, 2018).
Record Created By
David Lambert
Date of Entry
New entry 06/07/2025, replacing an earlier entry.
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00525 | Felicitas, martyr of Rome, with her sons, buried on the via Salaria | Felix, Phillipus | Certain |
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