Zeno and Gallienus
Two Gentlemen of Verona

Mark Humphries[1]

[1]This paper owes its origins to research conducted (as part of a larger project) in the pleasant surroundings of the Istituto di Filologia Classica at the Università degli Studi di Urbino and fieldwork carried out in Verona during April, May and June 1995. I am grateful to Professor Roberto Pretagostini and his staff at Urbino for their kind hospitality, and to the David Russell Trust of the University of St Andrews for facilitating my studies in Italy. I should also like to thank Yvonne Hawtin and Tom Harrison who read the paper and made various useful suggestions on style and content, as well as Theresa Urbainczyk and Andrew Erskine who offered invaluable editorial advice and devised the wonderful title. All remaining errors and faults, however, are mine alone. [The Irish connection for this article is that the author is a Dubliner and a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, Ed.]

[2]J.K. Fotheringham, The Roman Cities of Northern Italy and Dalmatia (London, 1910), 244-63.

[3]Preservation order: L Beschi, `Verona romana. I monumenti', in Verona e il suo territorio I (Verona, 1960), 460; used for executions: B. Ward-Perkins, From Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1984), 117.

[4]I. A. Richmond and W. G. Holford, `Roman Verona: the archaeology of its town-plan', Papers of the British School at Rome 13 (1935), 69-76.

[5]P. Godman, Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance (London, 1985), 29-30; J. K. Hyde, `Medieval Descriptions of Cities', Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 48 (1965-66), 308-40..

[6]Ward-Perkins, From Classical Antiquity, 226.

[7]The text may be found in Acta Sanctorum, Aprilis II (Paris and Rome, 1866) 70-72. The only modern study known to me is A. Vecchi, `I luoghi comuni nell' agiografia. Saggio sulla legenda veronese di S. Zenone', Augustinianum 24 (1984), 143-66.

[8]For a brief survey of Zeno's career: D. H. Williams, Ambrose of Milan and the End of the Nicene-Arian Conflicts (Oxford, 1995), 90-4.

[9]The only description is in R. Fasanari, Il portale di San Zeno (Verona, 1964).

[10]On his status as patron: M. C. Miller, The Formation of a Medieval Church. Ecclesiastical Change in Verona, 950-1150 (Ithaca, 1993), 15-17.

[11]A convenient text and translation of the Versus may be found in Godman, Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance, 180-186. My own translation is revised from Godman's.

[12]Miller, Formation, 14-15, conflates the real and symbolic pasts: `In the fourth century...the messengers of a pagan king (Gallienus) found him and begged him to free the king's daughter of a demon's tortures.'

[13]In what follows, I owe much to the methodology advocated by P. J. Geary, Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, 1994), 9-29

[14]Albeit reconstructed after bomb damage in April 1945.

[15]Versus 4-21.

[16]See E. J. Bickerman, Chronology of the Ancient World (rev. ed.; London, 1980), 58-61. Our poet (or a later copyist) has erred, however, in listing Minerva: the third day of the week derives its name from Mercury.

[17]It is from Versus 55-57 that Verona's Christian saints are its true defenders.

[18]R. R. Bolgar, The Classical Heritage and its Beneficiaries (Cambridge 1954), 119-21, on the differences between Italy and northern Europe.

[19]Ward-Perkins, From Classical Antiquity, 224-8.

[20]For Verona as a centre of learning, cf. B. Bischoff, Manuscripts and Libraries in the Age of Charlemagne (Cambridge, 1994), 1-19.

[21]M. Greenhalgh, The Survival of Roman Antiquities in the Middle Ages (London, 1989), 69-70; cf. Ward-Perkins, From Classical Antiquity, esp. 192-4, 219-20.

[22]

[23]Miller, Formation, 19, on the Porta San Zeno, or the Porta dei Borsari as it is better known today. Gallienus' influence on Veronese toponomy is evident today: near the Roman amphitheatre there is a fragment of the third century wall in a small square known as the Piazza Mura Gallieno. Adjacent to this there is a Bar Gallieno.

[24]Cf. M. Roberts, Poetry and the Cult of Martyrs. The Liber Peristephanon of Prudentius (Ann Arbor, 1993), 12-13, 36-7, 194, for the timelessness of the martyrs and their achievements.

[25]Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, 3. 23, states that the floodwaters rose `around the basilica of the blessed martyr Zeno which is located outside the walls of Verona', precisely where San Zeno Maggiore stands today.

[26]Gregory the Great Dialogues 3. 19. 2; Coronatus, Life of Zeno 9; Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, 3. 23.

[27]The model was probably Paulinus of Milan's Life of St Ambrose, where imperial politics loom large in the bishop's career.