Nota Bene - University of Chicago

epitaph, seeking to extract the marrow of facts about Christianity in the late second century
from it. 11 But whatever it was, in its original context (and, as this paper seeks to emphasize, it
has had many recontextualizations!) the epitaph of Abercius was part of a complex and grand
monument that was more than words, and more than message -- it was also the tomb, the
repository of the body of the man who speaks in first person in the epitaph he say he wrote
while alive, not just to tell of his trip to Rome, but also to guarantee the inviolability of the buried
body which the stone marks. My purpose in this essay is to give expression to some of my
attempts to ask about and fill in the blankness of my own iconographic imagination in multiple
ways, as informed by our encounter with Roman and Christian burials in Rome and Tunisia last
summer.
The historical Abercius pursued a journey from his Asian homeland to Rome, and after
his return to Asia Minor composed for himself a tomb monument so impressive that it was
talked about centuries later, and was incorporated into legend in the fourth or fifth century vita
Abercii, 12 from which it found its way into the Menologia (from the anonymous compiler, and
also Simeon Metaphrastes) and Acta Sanctorum traditions. 13 The tradition-historical
relationship between the literary life and the documentary inscription have been the subject of
lively debate, largely because the reconstruction of the epigram depends upon a critical
assessment and cautious alignment of these traditions and recensions, together with the
Alexander inscription. 14 In order to contextualize the Abercius inscription, we shall first look at
how the ancient literary traditions have done so, and how they wish us to view the object before
us.
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According to legend Abercius lived in Hieropolis of Phrygia Salutaris. Written much in
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11
This is replicated in scholarship continually, in which the inscription is interpreted as though simply a
given text (in such a standard resource as H. Strathmann and Th. Klauser, “Aberkios,” RAC 1 [1950] 12-17).
12
ed. Th. Nissen, S. Abercii Vita (Leipzig: Teubner, 1912); hereafter cited by chapter number, with Nissen’s
page in parentheses. In terms of dating, the work mentions �Ιουλιανο� ς ο� παραβα� της in §66 [47], hence it post-dates
361-363. J.B. Lightfoot (Apostolic Fathers, part II, vol. 1 [London: Macmillan, 1889] 500) puts it at ca. 380 CE.
13
ed. G. Lüdtke and Th. Nissen, Teubner, 1910.
14
There has also been debate about whether this Abercius is the same as the Averkios Marcellus
mentioned by Eusebius in HE 5.16.3 as the person to whom Apolinarius dedicated a treatise against the Montanists.
The inscription does not appear to have any anti-Montanist elements, in my judgment.