Damasus of Rome, The Epigraphic Poetry: Introduction, Texts, Translations, and Commentary by Dennis Trout (review)

The popes of late antique Rome are known for many things. They delivered stentorian proclamations of episcopal authority; they built and beautified many of the city’s churches; they fought in disputed episcopal elections and hounded heretics; they even (allegedly) confronted Attila the Hun. Poetry writing, alas, does not typically make the list. Dennis Trout’s welcomed new volume, Damasus of Rome, The Epigraphic Poetry, will help correct these assumptions. As Trout shows, at least one Roman bishop, Damasus (366–384 c.e.), dedicated substantial resources and personal time to the art of poetic composition. Among other contributions, the book presents the first complete set of English translations of all sixty-seven extant Latin poems, which the bishop composed during his tenure and in most cases commissioned the renowned calligrapher Philocalus to inscribe with his unique lettering on marble slabs. The majority of Damasus’s verse inscriptions commemorate the city’s martyrs, whose cult spaces outside Rome’s walls were also a subject of interest for the bishop. Damasus is attributed with extensive renovations of these martyr shrines, and we know that he ordered his own inscribed poems—a number of which feature the bishop’s signature—to adorn the walls. The volume also spotlights Damasus’s work as a poet, underlining his innovations on forms and techniques that were popular in the fourth century, such as the heavy use of Virgilian allusion. Indeed, what distinguishes Damasus of Rome from other studies on his poetic corpus is the fact that Trout carefully situates the poetry within multiple contexts: the literary, the archaeo-logical, and the historical. In addition to bringing Damasus’s full poetic corpus to English-speaking audiences for the first time, Trout offers readers a highly readable synthesis of recent scholarship on the bishop, his literary endeavors, and the broader ecclesiastical milieu.

The volume opens with a detailed introduction to Damasus and the poems (discussed further below). This is followed by a “reader’s guide” to key late ancient and medieval primary sources that Trout and others use to supplement the study of the Damasan epigrams. The remainder of the volume is dedicated to the full Latin text and English translation of all Damasus’s extant poems, including several highly fragmentary verses and the few non-epigraphic. Each poem is accompanied by detailed commentary: first a line-by-line discussion of key phrases, intertextual allusions, and relevant text critical information; second, a more general discussion of the poem, its original material and historical contexts, and its afterlife as either an extant inscription (typically fragmentary and often moved elsewhere) or a textual transcription (in manuscripts known as syllogae). The Latin text largely follows the still standard edition produced by Antonio Ferrua in 1942, with emendations offered only on issues brought to light by new evidence. Trout’s new English translations are lively but adhere closely to Latin; they will undoubtedly make their way quickly into teaching syllabi. The volume concludes with several indices, including a linguistic index on important Latin expressions.

The interdisciplinary nature of Damasus of Rome is arguably the book’s greatest strength. The lengthy introduction to the author and poems covers virtually every conceivable angle on the material with varying levels of detail. Trout gives due attention to Damasus’s larger martyr project and to the fractious ecclesiastical context in which he became bishop and composed the poems. He introduces readers to Philocalus and his elegant serif-accented script, and to the fascinating transmission history of the poems, many of which were copied into manuscripts by visiting pilgrims. And in a move that will please classicists, Trout addresses many technical features of Damasus’s poems, discussing at length matters such as metrical quantity (and the extent to which Damasus followed convention), Damasus’s use of caesuras and diaeresis, and his deliberate alteration between verbal repetition and innovation. Trout also enters the debate over Damasus’s alleged authorship of the...