Tomb Garden of Fl(avius) Dalmatius in Savaria

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Dates

3rd or 4th century

Garden Description

A limestone slab found near the monastery of St. Martin in Szombathely (Savaria), Hungary, in 1845 and subsequently transferred to the National Museum in Budapest records the epitaph of a high ranking equestrian official (vir perfectissimus), Fl(avius) Dalmatius, and his wife Aur(elia) Iulia, who some time during the third or fourth century built a tomb on their villa estate and composed for it a verse inscription in which Dalmatius hopes for commemoration from a future owner of the property: "Whoever will be master of this house and garden after me, gather the nearby roses for me, put out the white lilies which the green garden will grow for me: these are the gifts of the blessed" (Quisquis {h}e(ris) post me d(o)m(inus) Laris huius et (h)orti, / vicinas mihi carpe rosas, mihi lilia pone / [ca]ndeda{s} q(uae) viridis dabit (h)ortulus: ista (sc. munera) beat(or)um). A freedman Volussius and freedwoman Sabatia saw to the erection of the inscription and monument. On the basis of the final platitude, with its reference to "the blessed" (beati), Diehl considered Dalmatius and his wife to be Christians. For Adamik, on the other hand, commemoration with flowers, a practice condemned by Christian writers as idolatrous, points to a pagan context. The phrasing of the hexameters reveals familiarity also with Roman literary conventions of funerary commemoration (cf. Martial 1.61.3, quiquis eris nostri post me regnator agelli...).Whatever the religious beliefs of Dalmatius and his wife, the equipping of their tomb with a funerary garden to support commemorative celebrations at the site is fully in keeping with the literary pretensions of their epitaph in representing the couple as fully assimilated and sophisticated Romans.

Bibliography

CIL 3.4185.
CLE 578.
ILCV 296.
A. Mócsy and T. Szentléleky, Die römischen Steindenkmäler von Savaria. Amsterdam, 1971, p. 117, no. 161, photo 143. (worldcat)
T. Adamik,Archaeologiai Ertesítö 110, 1983:3-9 = AE 1984:722.

Savaria on Gardens of the Roman Empire

Tomb Garden of Fl(avius) Dalmatius in Savaria

Dates

Garden Description

Bibliography

Keywords