ABSTRACT
The only work extant by the aristocratic Roman lady Faltonia Betitia Proba is her Cento, or ‘patchwork’ poem, of 694 hexameters, written in about 360. Furthermore, very little is known about the identity of this woman: it is possible that she is identical with the Proba who is the addressee of one letter from Augustine and one from John Chrysostom.1 Her poem is composed entirely of a hotch-potch of lines and half-lines, occasionally slightly altered, from the works of Virgil. In using only Virgilian lines, Proba’s work takes the tendency of Christian poets to find their main inspiration in Virgil to its logical, and sometimes absurd, extreme. Lines 1-332 give an account based on the Old Testament stories of the Creation and Fall down to the Flood, while lines 333-694 are based on the New Testament and tell of Christ’s ministry, death and resurrection by which mankind is redeemed from the effects of the Fall.
