Si titulum quaeris: The elogium of St Felicitas and Ovid Fasti 6.212

Si titulum quaeris:The elogium of St Felicitas and Ovid Fasti 6.212 Gianmarco Bianchini In recent years a growing interest in the carmina Latina epigraphica of late antiquity has given rise to new critical readings of these texts, leading to increased scholarly attention to the engagement of epigraphic poetry with official literature as a cultural phenomenon in the late Roman empire.1 In this article, I propose to cast further light on the literary construction of ICVR VIII 23394, a Latin verse inscription from Rome probably composed during the papacy of Boniface i (418–422) to embellish the tomb of St Felicitas. In particular, I shall argue that the influence of the canonical classical authors on this text should be recognized as more extensive than has been generally thought, in the light of a half-line citation from Ovid's Fasti that has been overlooked until now.2 This additional facet to the inscription's poetic texture offers a different and more convincing solution to the interpretation of the hexameter of the final couplet than those that have been previously proposed. The life of St Felicitas, an aristocratic widow of senatorial rank who suffered martyrdom for her Christianity, is schematically described in one of the earliest surviving passiones of Roman martyrs (BHL 2853 = CPL 2187).3 After being arrested for the public display of her Christian faith during the reign of an "Antoninus,"4 she was tried by the urban prefect for refusing to sacrifice to the traditional Roman gods and subsequently executed along with her seven [End Page 125] sons.5 Some epigrams commemorating the sons of St Felicitas composed by, or associated with, Pope Damasus (366–384)6 prove that at the end of the fourth century the events of her and her sons' martyrdom were topical subjects. ICVR VIII 23394 was commissioned slightly later, probably by Pope Boniface i, to celebrate the renovation of St Felicitas' tomb.7 The inscription is now lost, but its text has survived in three medieval collections of Roman tituli preserved in ninth- and tenth-century manuscripts:8 the sylloge Centulensis (here indicated with C, now preserved at St Petersburg, Russian National Library, F.14.1, f. 128r), the sylloge Laureshamensis (L, now preserved in Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. lat. 833, ff. 79r–79v, only containing lines 5–11), and the sylloge Virdunensis (V, now in Verdun, Bibliothèque municipale, 45, f. 213r).9 These verses were displayed in the crypt of St Felicitas inside the cemetery of Maximus on the Via Salaria Nuova,10 but their precise location within the crypt remains uncertain.11 After their publication by Jan Gruter in 1602 (1176, no. 8) based only on the text of L, which was followed by a series of incomplete editions, De Rossi was the first editor to consider all three corpora.12 The text of the inscription reads as follows:13 [End Page 126] Intonuit metuenda dies, surrexit in hostem,impia tela mali uincere cum properat.Carnificis superare uias tunc mille nocendisola fides potuit quam regit Omnipotens.5 Corporeis resoluta malis, duce praedita Christo,aetheris alma parens atria celsa petit.Insontes pueros sequitur per amoena uirecta,tempora uictricis florea serta ligant.Purpuream rapiunt animam caelestia regna,10 sanguine lota suo membra tegit tumulus.Si titulum quaeris, meritum de nomine signat,ne opprimeris [– – –] fuit ista mihi. The fearful day arrived; she arose against the enemy, hastening to conquer the wicked weapons of evil. Her faith alone, which the Almighty directs, was able to overcome the executioner's thousand ways of inflicting injury. Freed from bodily evils, endowed with Christ as her guide, the kindly parent seeks the lofty halls of heaven. She follows her guiltless sons through lovely meadows: a garland of flowers binds the temples of the victorious woman. The heavenly kingdom receives her bloodied soul; the tomb covers her limbs, drenched with her own blood. If you ask about the inscription, it reveals her merit through her name: so, you would not be overwhelmed [– – –] this woman was to me.14 The poem consists of six elegiac couplets and tells—in the form of a bipartite text—the story of Felicitas' martyrdom and sanctification...

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