The Damasan inscriptions comprise c. 60 poems in honour of saints and martyrs, composed by pope Damasus I (366-384), and executed on large marble plaques with very fine, usually red, lettering by the talented 4th c. calligrapher Furius Dionysius Filocalus. The inscriptions were displayed in Rome, at saints' and martyrs' tombs, and were an important part of the programme of monumentalisation of the sites of saintly cult, initiated by the pope. The remains of many of these inscriptions have been found, but others are known only through manuscript transmission. Those which are fragmentary can be completed from the manuscript copies – especially syllogae that are medieval collections of copies of metrical inscriptions from the city’s late antique suburban martyria and basilicae as well as its urban churches. For Damasus’ epigrams the most important syllogae are: the sylloge Laureshamensis (Vat. Pal. 833) from the ninth-tenth centuries; the sylloge Centulensis (of cod. Petropolitano F XIV 1) from the eighth-ninth centuries; and the sylloge Turonensis derived from a seventh-century exemplar and surviving in several later manuscripts (e.g. Closterburgensis 723 and Gottweihensis 64). For more about the manuscripts containing Damasus’ poems see Trout 2015, p. 63-65.

 

This inscription was probably composed in hexameters. The fragments were discovered in AD 1917 in the area of the Catacomb of Pontianus near the Via Portuensis. The inscription apparently ran across the top of the front face of marble panels that formed a balustrade. The script is Philocalian.

The catacomb of Pontianus (Pontiani coemeterium) was localised at the second milestone on the Via Portuensis. It was established at least by the late third century. See Barbini 1998, p. 227-229; Loreti and Martorelli 2003, p. 372-377; LTUR sub Pontiani coemeterium.

 

(by Katarzyna Wojtalik, Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity E07150)