Primary source · Latin (verse)
The Epigrams of Damasus
Damasus of Rome; cut in stone by Furius Dionysius Filocalus · AD 366–384
What this text is
Some sixty verse inscriptions, about thirty-five of them naming martyrs, which Damasus set over the graves of the Roman catacombs during his pontificate and had cut by the calligrapher Filocalus in the elegant script still called Filocalian. They are the physical core of the Roman martyr cult: Damasus located the tombs, restored the galleries, opened stairs and light-shafts for pilgrims, and put a poem at each shrine. For several of the people named — Tarsicius, Eutychius, Felicissimus and Agapitus among them — the epigram is not a corroboration of a story told elsewhere but the ONLY early evidence there is; the later Passions derive from the poems rather than the reverse. Ihm's Damasi Epigrammata (1895) is public domain; Ferrua (1942) and Trout (2015) supply the standard numbering.
Profile of Damasus I of Rome →
Public-domain translations
Maximilian Ihm, Damasi Epigrammata (Leipzig, 1895) — Latin text
Editions & scholarship
Critical editions and standard translations behind the text above.
- Damasi Epigrammata, Anthologiae Latinae Supplementa 1Maximilian Ihm, 1895The earlier critical edition of the epigrams, superseded by Ferrua but still cited.
- Epigrammata DamasianaAntonio Ferrua, 1942the standard critical edition
- Damasus of Rome: The Epigraphic PoetryDennis Trout, 2015text with English translation
Figures named in this text (23)
- Hippolytus of Rome
- Tarcisius the Acolyte
- Tarsicius
- Agapitus the Deacon
- Felicissimus the Deacon
- Heraclius
- Lawrence (Laurentius) of Rome
- Xystus II (Sixtus II) of Rome
- Achilleus of Domitilla
- Nereus of Domitilla
- Gorgonius of Nicomedia
- Adauctus the Finance Minister
- Agnes of Rome
- Marcellinus the Presbyter
- Peter the Exorcist
- Eutychius the Martyr
- Faustinus of the Generosa epigram
- Viatrix
- Marcellus I of Rome
- Eusebius of Rome
- Irene
- Verus the Presbyter
- Damasus I of Rome
Verse epitaphs composed by Damasus of Rome for the martyrs’ graves of the city and cut in stone by his calligrapher Furius Dionysius Filocalus, whose distinctive lettering identifies them. They are the reason many Roman martyrs can be located in a particular cemetery at all: where the epigram survives, so does the tomb it named. The linked text is Ihm’s Latin edition; there is no complete public-domain English translation.