Primary source · Koine Greek, on stone
The Epitaph of Abercius
Abercius of Hierapolis · before AD 216
What this text is
The 'queen of Christian inscriptions': a bishop's own guarded verse epitaph — the pure shepherd, the queenly city, the fish from the spring held by the spotless virgin — recovered in fragments from Phrygia in 1883.
Profile of Abercius of Hierapolis →
Interlinear passages
Word-for-word glosses of the original; the complete public-domain translation is linked below.
Public-domain translations
After J. B. Lightfoot's rendering (1889)
The citizen of an elect city, I made this while I lived, that I might have in time a resting-place for my body. Abercius by name, I am a disciple of the pure Shepherd… Faith everywhere led the way and set before me for food the Fish from the spring — immense, pure — which the spotless Virgin grasped.
Manuscript witnesses
The inscribed stele (Vatican Museums)
c. AD 200 (original stone)Two fragments of Abercius's own gravestone, found by Ramsay in 1883 — the earliest identified Christian epitaph, speaking of the fish, the virgin, and the seal.
Vita Abercii (text carrier)
4th c. text; medieval copiesThe legendary Life transcribes the whole epitaph, completing the stone's lacunae.
Provenance
Hieropolis in Phrygia, c. AD 200 — 'the queen with the golden robe'
Editions & scholarship
Critical editions and standard translations behind the text above.
- The Cities and Bishoprics of PhrygiaW. M. Ramsay, 1897The discoverer's publication of the stone.
- The Epitaph of Abercius (in: Studies in Early Christian Epigraphy)Margaret M. Mitchell, 2008–Modern assessment of text and context.