Proba's Cento: Its Date, Purpose, and Reception

R. P. H. Green

The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 45, No. 2. (1995), pp. 551-563.

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Classical Quarterly 45 (ii) 551-563 (1995) Printed in Great Britain 551

PROBA'S C E N T O : I T S DATE, P U R P O S E , A N D

RECEPTION

It may seem faintly absurd to claim or imply that a Vergilian cento has suffered
unjustified neglect from scholars. These works-of which there are sixteen, covering
a period of over three centuries within Late Antiquity1-are usually treated at best
with amused tolerance, and at worst (as in the new Anthologia la tin^)^ with angry
disdain. Though always ingenious, sometimes funny, and occasionally informative
about the reception of Vergil, they are seldom admired. Even among Italian scholars,
some of whom have paid much attention to centos, a recession has set in since the
annus mirabilis of 1981, which saw two editions of the Medea of Hosidius Geta.3
Proba has, deservedly, attracted more attention than most; her aims and methods as
a Christian poetess were carefully and illuminatingly studied twenty years ago by
Reinhard Herzog,* and her interest as a female Roman aristocrat has brought her
further attention, especially in recent years.5 The main aim of the present article is to
suggest a particular context and a serious purpose for her cento. A postscript will
show that it went on to enjoy considerable popularity until the end of the century, and
an introductory section will discuss its date, but very briefly, since Matthews has
convincingly said most of what needs to be said about a recent attempt to redate it.6
Proba's preface, much of it not in cento form, calls for detailed treatment from various
angles-textual, literary, historical-and will be explored in a separate article.

THE DATE
Before Shanzer wrote the work was generally dated to the 350s or 360s, on the basis
of information supplied by the manuscripts. Shanzer claimed, first, that the
manuscript subscriptiones (sic) do not deserve the reliance that has been placed on
them, and secondly, that the work was written after the Carmen contra paganos,
which cannot (as she argued) be earlier than 384 or later than 385.' Both lines of
argument lead her to assert that the authoress is not Faltonia Betitia Proba (Proba
2 in PLRE), as traditionally assumed, but her granddaughter Anicia Faltonia Proba
(Proba 3); and that since the statements which point to the elder Proba are 'muddled'
and 'arbitrarily imported' at some stage, this is not at odds with the best of the
evidence. Matthews has demonstrated that the statement that Proba was the wife of
' See F. Ermini, I1 centone di Proba e la poesia centonaria Latina (Rome, 1909), pp. 42-55.
Anthologia Latina 1. 1 : D . R. Shackleton Bailey (ed.), (Stuttgart, 1982), Praefatio p. 111.
For the bibliography relevant to both Geta and Proba, see the article on Proba by
R. Herzog in R. Herzog (ed.), Restauration und Erneuerung: Die lateinische Literatur von 284 bis
374 n. Chr. (Munich, 1989), pp. 33740, and F. E. Consolino, 'Da Osidio Geta ad Ausonio e
Proba: le molte possibilita del centone', Atene e Roma ns 28 (1983), pp. 133-51.
R. Herzog, Die Bibelepik der Lateinischen Spdtantike 1 (Munich, 1975), pp. xlix-li and 3-51.
M. R. Salzmann, Helios 16 (1989), 207-20, and H. Sivan, Vigiliae Christianae 47 (1993),
140-57.
J. F. Matthews, 'The Poetess Proba and Fourth Century Rome: questions of interpretation'
in Christol, M., Demougin, S., Duval, Y., Lepelley, C., Pietri, L., (edd.), Institutions, SociPtP, et
Vie politique dans ['Empire Romain au ive siecle up. J.-C., pp. 277-304 (Rome, 1992) (this
appeared when an earlier version of this paper had been completed), taking issue with
D. Shanzer, 'The anonymous carmen contrapaganos and the Date and Identity of the centonist
Proba', Revue des Etudes Augustiniennes 32 (1986), pp. 23248.
' Shanzer, pp. 23744. For the CCP, see Anthologia Latina 4 Riese, 3 Shackleton Bailey.
552 R. P . H. G R E E N

Adelphius, praefectus urbis Romae or in one version expraefecto (he held the honour
in 351), which is made by I ~ i d o r eby
, ~ the manuscript Vat. Pal. Lat. 17539and by the
so-called codex Mutinensis,lo comes from a source which was unusually accurate, and
one with which Isidore had a demonstrable connection." The statement in the codex
Mutinensis that Proba had earlier written of the war of Constantius (so Seeck for the
manuscript's Con~tantini)'~against Magnentius does not sound like a medieval
fiction-it is hardly comparable, as Shanzer claims, with the idea of Remigius of
Auxerre that Martianus Capella went to Rome and met Cicero13-and Matthews has
shown that it fits the historical context suggested by the opening lines of her preface
perfectly well. It is the information that points in a different direction that needs to
be sceptically examined. First, there is the phrase Aniciorum mater in Vat. Pal. Lat.
1753, which, unless (as Matthews suggests with some hesitation) it is taken to mean
'the doyenne of the Anician gens', clearly points to Proba 3. This is surely a gloss,
both intrusive and obtrusive, for until the new sentence begins, with the words
praedicta Proba, any descriptive epithets ought to be in the genitive case.14Presumably
it originated in the heyday of the younger Proba. Secondly, it is stated not only in a
marginal comment on line 689 of the poem in Vat. Reg. Lat. 166615 but also in
Taurinensis F IV 716, that Proba was wife of Alypius, which is not true of any known
Proba. Matthews was right to point out that the marginal comment has no intrinsic
connection with the attribution of the poem in the same manuscript to Faltonia
Betitia Proba, so refuting Shanzer's assertion that the manuscript is 'not even self-
consistent', but some explanation of it is required. I suggest that it is the result of the
insidious kind of error known as saut du mime au mime. A scribe reading something
like uxor Adelphi mater Olibrii et Aliepii (as the codex Mutinensis has it) might easily
have jumped from the second word to the sixth and so condemned his readers and
copyists to an error which they could not correct or even suspect. Thirdly, we find in
a medieval catalogue of the Abbey of Lobbes the entry Centon Valeriae Aniciae de
vigiliis veteris ac novi te~tamenti.'~ Vigiliis is demonstrably a corruption of Vergilii
De viris illustribus 18; Etymologiae 1. 39. 26.
incipiunt indicula centonis probae inlustris romanae aniciorum mater De Maronis quiet virgilii
mantuani vatis libris praedicta proba, uxor adelphy expraefecto urbis hunc centon religiosa mente
amore Christi spiritu ferventi prudenter enucliate deforavit, as recorded by A. Reifferscheid in
Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschajten (Wien) phi1.-hist. Classe, LVI
(1867), p. 552.
l o Proba uxor Adelphi mater Olibrii et Aliepii, cum Constantini bellum adversus Magnentium
conscripsisset, conscripsit et hunc librum, recorded by B,de Montfaucon, Diarium Italicum (Paris,
1702), p. 36. This and other manuscript texts are quoted from K. Schenkl's edition (Poetae
Christiani Minores, C S E L 16, (Prague, Vienna, Leipzig, 1888), pp. 51 1-609. As Matthews shows
(279), Montfaucon found it at the abbey of S. Benedictus Padolirensis, now San Benedetto Po.
" Pp. 285-8.
l 2 0.Seeck, Q. Aurelii Symmachi Quae Supersunt, ( M G H A A VI I), p, xcv; the names are also
confused in manuscripts of Ausonius, Grat. Act. 5 3 4 , and elsewhere.
l 3 Shanzer, p. 233 n. 4.
l 4 inlustris may also be a gloss, not of course on grammatical grounds, but because it is more
appropriate to the later fourth century (Matthews, p. 290 n. 24) than the middle. This is no
problem, since even if the words Aniciorum mater were written in the lifetime of Proba 3 the
interval before the addition of the gloss need not be a long one.
l 5 ut colant (Christum) omnes, ut adorent, hortatur (Proba), imo etiam et Alipyum virum suum
idfacere monet.
'' Probae Alipii uxoris cento. The manuscript was briefly reported by Schenkl, who had
received various information about it from his friend J. Miiller but uses it nowhere else; see also
C. Cipolla, G. de Sanctis and C. Frati in RFIC 32 (1904), p. 568.
l 7 F. Dolbeau, ' U n nouveau catalogue des manuscrits de Lobbes aux xie et xiie siecles',
Recherches Augustiniennes 14 (1979), p. 219 (no. 238).
libris or something similar; Valeriae is likely to be a trivialisation of Vetitiae or of
some corruption of it, while Aniciae may be due to the abovementioned error
Aniciorum muter, whether as an inference or a palaeographical development from it,
or to some other reflection of Proba 3. Whatever the value of the catalogue's
testimony in this case, the name Anicia is a small thing to set against the other pieces
of evidence now convincingly reinstated.
The diversity of this manuscript information, then, is not due to 'medieval
importation' or free fantasy, as Shanzer suggested, but to various familiar kinds of
scribal corruption, including an early gloss. T o this extent we may almost agree with
Shanzer's hyperbole that 'confusion is apparent in the manuscripts from the very
start'.18 And indeed, viewed as a whole, the manuscript evidence on this point could
fairly be described 'muddled'; but the patient analysis of muddle can be very
illuminating, especially when as here a core of good information emerges. The fact
that the ascription to Proba 2 is also rather 'sporadic' is not a problem; it is typical
of scribes to be selective in such circumstances, as almost any set of tituli introducing
an ancient writer will show.
Shanzer's second line of argument is that line 17 of Proba's preface (which until line
24 is not a cento) iurgantesque deos procerum victosque Penates alludes to the Carmen
contra paganos, where the same phrase iurgantesque deos in line 22 is followed by
proceres (vocative) in the next line. Although some might reject the parallel as
insignificant or derive it from a hypothetical common source, the exact identity of
wording and metrical position are certainly notable. The matter deserves fuller
attention than can be given here, including a full examination of the context and some
questioning of the transmitted text, but for the time being two points, one general and
one particular, can be made. First, the mode of allusion is one sense fuller, and in
another weaker, than one would expect. In such cases verbal similarity (iurgantesque
deos) is generally reckoned to be enough, but Proba evidently thought that procerum
should be added in case it were missed; yet procerum in itself is not exactly very
explicit. Would it convey to a reader not already alerted to the echo that here was an
allusion to CCP? Secondly, since Proba is steeped in Vergil one might suggest a
Vergilian sense and reference for her procerum: the founder-fathers of the Roman
state. To point out that the Roman pantheon was prone from the outset to internal
dissension and bickering (the Trojans had been bidden to include Juno in their
worship) is a very good point to make in the context.
The case for Proba 2 is not put in jeopardy by the scornful comments of Jerome
in a letter to Paulinus of Nola,lg in which he laments that centos were penned by all
sorts of inadequates: hanc (scripturarum ars) garrula anus, hanc delirus senex, hanc
soleocista verbosus, hanc universi praesumunt, lacerant, docent, antequam discant. alii
adducto supercilio grandia verba trutinantes inter mulierculas de sacris litteris
philosophantur, alii discunt-pro pudor!-a feminis, quod viros doceant, et, ne parum
hoc sit, quadam facilitate verborum, immo audacia, disserunt aliis quod ipsi non
intellegunt. It is indeed quite likely that there is a reference to Proba behind the
stereotype of the garrula anus-she seems to be quoted later in this passage,20though
in a cento one can never be completely sure-but the present tense should not be

l8 Shanzer, p. 235, n. 22.

l9 Ep. 53.7. On the date and circumstances, see P. Nautin, Revue des Etudes Augustiniennes
19 (1973), pp. 213-30.
20 See P. Courcelle, 'Les Exegeses Chretiennes de la Quatrieme Eglogue', Revue des Etudes
Anciennes, 59 (1957), pp. 309-10.
554 R. P. H. G R E E N

taken to imply that she was active or even alive in 394.21Satire is more effective if set
in the present; much better to give the idea that people are doing it all the time than
to specify the real grievance. As will be seen later, Jerome had a good reason at this
particular time to warn his correspondent against a work written a generation earlier.
Nor is it at odds with the presumed historical context, but on the contrary, as
Matthews has shown, Proba 2 fits rather well. Adelphius was indeed praefectus urbis
under the usurper Magnentius in 351, but neither this nor the statement of
AmmianuszZthat he became suspect to the usurper need rule out the possibility that
his wife wrote a poem about the conflict with C o n s t a n t i ~ sCertainly
.~~ the first two
lines of Proba's preface seem if anything pro-Constantinian: iamdudum temerasse
duces pia foedera pacis, regnandi miseros tenuit quos dira cupido .. . . The 'duces' have
violated a state of peace, and so look like the usurping forces; their desire to rule is,
in some sense, ' d i r ~ 'The
. ~ ~remainder, it is true, emphasises the total slaughter and
mayhem, though the expression of line 6, which breaks up the flow of Lucanian
rhetoric, raises problems that are more than stylistic. If there is a reference to
Constantius' triumph (as it is described in Ammianus) in Rome in 357, a date slightly
later than that of Matthews would be necessary; and if it is hostile to the emperor then
this line, though not necessarily the poem about the civil war, might be thought to
follow Constantius' death. But whatever the nuances of the preface, or the nature of
the earlier poem, there is no good reason not to set it somewhere in the decade or so
after Adelphius' urban prefecture.

THE PURPOSE O F THE C E N T 0

Centos are essentially a frivolous genre, but Proba is not writing for fun. She emerges
as a serious and earnest writer, 25 one who uses Vergil with discrimination and is not
afraid to 'correct' him when n e c e s ~ a r y It
. ~ is
~ not her concern to build bridges on
which pagans and Christians may meet, as Minucius Felix tried to do. Nor does
she resort to Vergil for proof-texts. In one of the few articles to touch on the strategy
of this cento, Wiesenz7 sought to present her work as a development of a process
which he found in germ in the Octavius of Minucius Felix, where at 19.2-3 the
apologist seems tacitly to combine two Vergilian texts (G. 4.221f. and A . 1.743) to suit
his purpose. But whatever the explanation of that,z8there is a world of difference not
only in scale but also in purpose between Proba's arduous endeavour and this isolated
phenomenon in Minucius. Proba is not using Vergil to elucidate or commend
complexities of Christian theology; most of the time she uses him to describe things
which do not require explanation, such as riches and storms. And she is obviously not
an anticipator of Fulgentius, treating Vergil as a 'code' to be ' d e ~ i p h e r e d ' .She
~ ~ is
not allegorising Vergil, and nowhere suggests that she has penetrated to a level of
meaning which others have missed. So what exactly was she up to?
It is not known when Proba 2 died; Proba 3 was alive in 410.
" Ammianus 16. 6. 2.
23 Matthews, pp. 291-9, against Shanzer, p. 235, n. 22 (end).
24 For dira cupido cf. Verg. G. 1.37 (preceded by regnandi), and A. 6.373 and 721, 9.185.
25 AS noted by I. Opelt in her useful article 'Der ziirnende Christus im Cento der Proba',
Jahrbuch fur Antike und Christentum 7 (1964), pp. 106116, at p. 114, Proba adds to the Sermon
on the Mount a denunciation of idolatry.

6' Her discrimination may be seen in her use of the Fourth Eclogue (cf. P. Courcelle, op, cit.,
pp. 294-319; Opelt, op. cit., p. 109); and her readiness to correct Vergil in line 25 of the Preface.
" D. S. Wiesen, Hermes 99 (1971), p. 72.
Wiesen, agreeing with P. Courcelle, Archives d'Histoire Doctrinale et Litte'raire du Moyen
Age 22 (1955), p. 39, maintains that this is deliberate (pp. 8 6 7 ) . 29 Wiesen, p. 72.
 It is as well to avoid such generalisations as 'such was the intellectual climate o f the
fourth century'30(one recalls Gibbon's vague pontification on 'the taste o f the age'
when dismissing Ausonius) and to set aside colourful words about 'redeeming epic'
or the redemption o f humanity through epic.31Nor should Vergil be enrolled too
hastily among the ranks o f C h r i s t i a n ~or
, ~said
~ to be ' b a p t i ~ e d 'W. ~e ~do indeed have
a sort o f 'symbiosis o f Christianity and classical culture',34but a very strange one.
W h y resort to this bizarre and essentially playful form, one despised then as well as
now, rather than (for example) compiling a philosophical dialogue like Minucius or
metaphrasing the Bible into epic hexameters as Juvencus did? A writer seeking a
challenge should not have found it difficultto improve on either o f these. Chronology
offers the basis o f an answer: the date to which Proba's cento now seems firmly
anchored suggests that the context may well be the reign o f Julian. This was suggested
long ago by A m a t ~ c c i albeit
, ~ ~ on the basis o f the false reading natis in line 12 and
vague surmises about the age o f her sons. Amatucci linked the cento to Julian's
notorious law which forbade Christian teachers o f grammar and rhetoric to practise
in schools (C. Th. 13.3.5), and saw line 23 (Vergilium cecinisse loquar pia munera
Christi) as a riposte to Julian's scornful suggestion in his letter on the subject (Ep. 61
Bidez, 36 Wright)that Christians should go to their churches and teach Matthew and
Luke. The drift o f his very compressed argument is not at all clear, but the idea
deserves further exploration.
The extant version o f the law (C. Th. 13.3.5) reads as follows: Magistros studiorum
doctoresque excellere oportet moribus primum, deinde facundia. Sed quia singulis
civitatibus adesse ipse non possum, iubeo quisque docere vult, non repente nec temere
prosiliat ad hoc munus, sed iudicio ordinis probatus decretum curialium mereatur,
optimorum conspirante consensu. Hoc enim decretum ad me tractandum referetur, ut
altiore quodam honore nostra iudicia studiis civitatum accedant. The first sentence,
which is all that concerns us now, is remarkably bland: o f course teachers should not
be the sort o f people to rob, seduce, murder, or otherwise harm their charges-though
often the boot (so to speak) seems to have been on the other foot in the classrooms
o f Late Antiquity. The priority o f mores is, however, significant; the law o f eighteen
months later which repealed this one begins si quis erudiendis adulescentibus vita
pariter etfacundia idoneus erit (C. Th. 13.3.6). Although we do not know the exact
relation between the letter o f Julian and the version o f the law that we possess, we may
assume that the letter is a good representation o f the thinking behind his measure.
This leaves one in no doubt why Julian's law was greeted with such indignation by
Gregory o f Nazianzen, Ammianus, and others.36Julian begins by definingpaideia not
as a matter o f words but as a healthy disposition o f a sensible mind, onewhich can
distinguish good and evil. There is nothing extraordinary here (cf.Hor. S. 1.6.63 and
Ausonius, IX. 9 ) ; what is novel, and aggressively so, is the subsequent accusation o f
moral inconsistency cast at Christian teachers on the grounds that they were teaching

30 Wiesen, p. 84. 31 F . E. Consolino, op. cit. (n. 3), p. 148.

32 AS by Herzog (op. cit. n. 3), p. 339.

33 AS by J. Fontaine, Naissance de la poe'sie duns I'occident chre'tien (Paris, 1981), p. 105.

34 R. A. Markus, 'Paganism, Christianity and the Latin Classics in the Fourth Century', in

J. W. Binns (ed.), Latin Literature of the Fourth Century (London, 1974), p. 3.

36 A. G . Amatucci, Storia della Letteratura Latina Cristiana (Turin, 1955), p. 131.
36 Greg. Naz. Or. IV. 5 and 10112, V. 39; Amm. 22.10.7, 25.4.20. These and other references
are conveniently given by J. Bidez and F. Cumont, Imperatoris Caesaris Flavii Claudii Iuliani
Epistulae Leges Poematia Fragments Varia (Paris and London, 1922), pp. 69-75; and the article
of B. C. Hardy 'The Emperor Julian and his school law' in Church History 37 (1968), 13143,
begins with a survey of reactions to the measure.
556 R. P . H. G R E E N
things in which they did not believe. The age-old question about the existence and
nature of the gods is begged and resolved into a moral one, and the Christians
reduced by Julian to the moral status of back-street traders and con-men. To remedy
this unsatisfactory situation Julian offers the Christian teachers a choice. Though the
text is not at all clear at this point, the first possibility is clear enough: they should
not teach something which they do not take seriously. The alternative seems to be
to persuade their pupils that neither Homer nor Hesiod nor any of the poets whom
they expound is guilty of Christian charges, whether they be charges of impiety,
stupidity, and error (so Wright, moulding the words K ~ T E Y V ~ K O ~&E US ~ / ~ E L~ ~V VO L ~ V
TE ~ a ~1A d v EES
~ v T O ~ OEOL;S
S into his text with many undeclared supplements) or just
of stupidity (Bidez, giving a paraphrase in French rather than trying to heal a badly
lacerated text). In fact-although the appeal by the government to the 'consumer'
may have to modern ears the ring of authenticity-the exact detail of this challenge
to Christian teachers may have been, in Julian's eyes, ultimately unimportant; for the
choice given a little later to the Christians seems to imply that any such persuasion
would be unsuccessful. 'Let them imitate the poets' piety to the gods, or if they
assume them to have erred in their attitude to the most precious beings, let them go
to the churches of the Galileans to expound Matthew and Luke' (423 d). Whatever
followed in the text-Bidez attributes the blank in the manuscript to the disgust of a
Christian scribe-this reads rather like Marie Antoinette's insultingly impossible 'let
them eat cake'. Marrou, it is true, made Julian the creator of the first Christian
schools in antiquity (prefacing his statement with the surprising words 'sans
paradoxe'), but on his own evidence these were very slow to appear.37In fact the
alternative course of setting up Christian schools, whether in churches or somewhere
else, was not only one that was not pursued at this juncture (this is hardly surprising,
since the law was soon repealed) but one that Christians of this period could hardly
have envisaged. The best evidence that it was unthinkable is that of Augustine's
blueprint for Christian teaching and learning, his De Doctrina Christiana. In the first
part of this work, which he wrote at the end of the fourth century, Augustine sought
to prescribe the intellectual equipment necessary for a complete understanding of
scripture, in a programme that is very similar to that of traditional education. He
makes no institutional provision for its acquisition, and at least in the case of history
(2. XXVII. 41 [104]) and logic (2. XXXI. 48 [120]) is not concerned whether these
things are learnt in a Christian or a pagan environment. He seems to assume,
notwithstanding the reservations that he so graphically expressed in his Confessions,
that most Christians will go along to the grammatical schools and loot the Egyptians
from an early age. In the second part of his treatise, written some thirty years later,
he turns to rhetoric and allows that although rhetoric may be learnt exclusively from
Christian texts young people who wish to learn rhetoric may learn it from secular
texts, following the traditional rules, if they have the time (4. 111. 4-5 [613]). Again,
no specific institutional framework is considered. Evidence from John Chrysostom
points the same way: although he sees the dangers of traditional education, he does
not recommend the avoidance of pagan schools.38A Christian school seems not to be
an option for the large numbers involved, and it is unlikely that Julian thought it a
practical possibility; or if he did, he may have mischievously entertained the
possibility that educated Christian teachers would bicker over the interpretation of
scripture and so frustrate their own efforts.
37 H.-I. Marrou, Histoire de I'Education duns I'AntiquitP (Paris, 1948), p. 428.
38 John Chrysostom, adv. oppugn. vit. mon. 3.12 (PG 47.367), partially quoted by
P. Athanassiadi-Fowden, Julian and Hellenism: an inrellectual biography (Oxford, 1981), p. 1.
 PROBA'S C E N T O 557
It is easy to exaggerate the number of teachers in the Roman Empire (for example,
it is debatable whether a decent sized city like Bordeaux had more than one chair of
rhetoric),39but there can be no doubt that the law aimed a savage blow at an Clite.
Most of its victims will have been less able to cope than Prohaeresius, Victorinus, and
Ausoniu~.~O They will have lost their auditoria (prominently mentioned in the
repealing law), and their income; they will have lost a position of considerable status41
and an important ladder to social advancement. As far as Christian pupils were
concerned, it was seen as no less catastrophic. Bowersock is surely right to say 'within
little more than a generation the educated Clite of the empire would be pagan'.42
Although later writers say that Christian pupils were debarred from the schools,43his
letter makes it quite clear that Julian wanted them to remain under pagan influences.
But they would be separated at a stroke from their Christian teachers, as Jerome
implies when he describes Julian's vain concession to the Christian Prohaeresius with
the words cum sibi specialiter Iulianus concederet ut Christianos d ~ c e r e tKeeping
.~~ his
chair and continuing to teach Christians were one and the same thing. Henceforth all
pupils would be taught, if not by virulent pagans like Julian himself, by teachers who,
whatever they might have done before, now had an incentive to take the gods
seriously. It would be very difficult for a teacher to maintain a position of professional
n e ~ t r a l i t y ;teachers
~~ who had soft-pedalled on Vergil's gods out of respect for
Christian sensibilities (or because of their own scepticism) now had to give them more
weight. This requirement might alienate some, but the majority would conform.
Various reactions to this crisis may be imagined. To rigorists the alternative of
ignoring Homer and Vergil and the rest, and expounding Matthew and Luke in
church premises or elsewhere to relatively small groups of willing students, may have
seemed attractive. At least so it would appear from the remarks of such people as the
earlier Tertullian and the contemporary John C h r y s ~ s t o m ,although
~~ none had
benefited more from traditional education than these. But there is no evidence that
such attitudes were strongly to the fore at this time. We do, however, have in Socrates
and other writers details of an attempt to provide an alternative literature for the use
of those who (as these writers wrongly believed) had been banned from state schools.
Evidently a certain A p o l l i n a r i ~ sset
~ ~ to and created a complete rival literature,
classical in form but Christian in content. The father wrote a Christian grammar (one
that did not draw on classical texts), and rewrote the Mosaic books and the historical
works of the Old Testament partly in epic hexameters and partly in tragedies, while
the younger put the New Testament into Platonic dialogues. Sozomen adds to their
oeuvre comedies in the style of Menander and Pindaric odes. The Psalms are not
mentioned; an extant fragment of an ancient Psalm paraphrase has been attributed
39 See R. P. H. Green, CQ 35 (1985), 493-5 and A. D. Booth, Phoenix 36 (1982), 329-343.
40 For Prohaeresius, see Jerome, Chron. s.a. 363, for Victorinus, Augustine, Confessions 8.5
(lo), and for Ausonius the less clear-cut evidence assembled by R. P. H. Green in C Q 35 (1985),
502 and 505.
41 Marrou, Education, 409414, to be read against R. A. Kaster, Guardians ofLanguage: the
grammarian and society in Late Antiquity (University of California, 1988), pp. 99-134.
4 2 G . Bowersock, Julian the Apostate (London, 1978), p. 84.
43 Augustine, De Civitate ~ e 18.52,i Socrates 3.16, = ~ o z o m e n5.18 (PG 67.419-21 and
1269-72). 44 See n. 40.
45 SO R. Browning, The Emperor Julian (London, 1975), p. 173.
4"ertullian, de Idol. 10; for John Chrysostom, see n. 38.
4 7 According to R E 1.2842-3 the younger Apollinarius, later to become the bishop of
Laodicea, wrote all these works, since the father seems to have died about 360; but if that is true
it is more likely that they were written before the crisis than that Socrates is confused. But the
identification of poet and theologian is far from certain: see also R A C 1. 52G1.
558 R. P. H. G R E E N
to them, but this seems unlikely.48 The aim of these compositions was obviously to
preserve the stylistic and grammatical heritage of ancient Greek literature; in the
words of Socrates 6nws C L 7 8 ~i-pdnos
1~ i-7js r E h h ? 7 ~ i ~y 7hj ~d ~ r ~Tois
s xp~u~iavois
&V$KOOS ?i.I n his eyes the main loss to Christian students would have been the arsenal
of arguments that were deployed for paganism and against Christianity, arguments
which-as Gregory has said-showed the weakness of paganism and could be used
by Christians to demolish it. But, at least in the mid-fifth century, the programme of
the Apollinarii had great ideological appeal, for Socrates finds it necessary to defend
at some length his belief that they were second best, and Sozomen showers great
praise on these hastily compiled ersatz classics. Indeed, after reading Sozomen, one
wonders why Christians ever went back to the classics. But they did, and the works
of the Apollinarii were in Socrates' time virtually unknown: 2v ?act,rod p+ ypa47jvai
hoyl~ovra~.
These works were not centos; Proba's work on the other hand was, and follows a
rather different path. Again there is the aim to preserve the grammar, metre, style, and
vocabulary of the ancient text. But why recycle Vergil, and why cast him in this
particular mould? If necessary, the work of Juvencus, which seems to have been quite
well-known, could have served; his recipe might obviously be applied to other
scriptures. It does not seem that the cento was particularly fashionable at this time:
most of the extant ones are later. Vergil was of course immensely popular, but so was
Homer, and yet Apollinarius had not felt it necessary to go to the length of preserving
his exact words. It seems that Proba was not concerned with providing an alternative
literature like the Apollinarii; nor is it for a moment likely that she was simply
disguising Christian material to elude the censors, in the way that bibles disguised as
Das Kapital used to be smuggled into coxmunist countries. Her aim, I suggest, was
to try to meet Julian halfway and keep Christian teachers in their classrooms. Her text
(as implied in the prologue) is a Vergil without gods, and so a Vergil no longer
vulnerable to Christian criticism. The language given to the gods may be used, as in
lines 29-30, but it is put to new purposes. Vergil's verses had been detoxified by being
sundered from their contexts4Qor-as in the case of the few lines which in themselves
were morally or theologically offensive-ignored. If teachers used this as a textbook
they might persuade their students that they did not regard the Vergil represented
here as impious (or stupid, or misguided) towards the gods, and so, in Julian's terms,
they could safeguard their moral integrity. (In this light one may detect irony in
Proba's claim in line 12 of her preface to be a vatis proba). It was of course a poor
substitute for the real Vergil, and indeed a drastic bowdlerisation; but in a time of
crisis might have seemed a possible way out. At least in some places it might convince
the curiae to whom the law had given the task of approving teachers in accordance
with the imperial blueprint: in Rome Proba would have a good chance of aristocratic
support, and elsewhere there would be Christian councils who would do what they
could to frustrate or delay the law. And as well as meeting this crisis, albeit at a cost
that seems to us very great, Proba had gone on the offensive and incorporated an
outline of Christian teaching, not without her own emphases,50on the important early
chapters of Genesis and the life, death and ascension of Christ.

48 Good grounds for not doing so are offered by A. Ludwich, Hermes 13 (1878), 335-50,
and J. Golega, 'Der Homerische Psalter' (Studia Patristica et Byzantina 6: Ettal, 1960), pp. 5-24
and 169-171.
4 9 This is not entirely true, as noted by Herzog in his study of the cento (Bibelepik, 15-35),
but the longer scenes which she evokes do not involve matters of doctrinal substance.
50 See the article of I. Opelt cited in n. 25.
 But supposing it satisfied Julian and his administration on political grounds, could
it stand the educational test? Would it work? Was it worth teaching? Of course, much
was lost, but the new text could have served a grammatical purpose very well. One
can agree with Clark and Hatch that 'Children might then learn Vergilian Latin
without needing to hear of Dido's passion or of bloody warfare';51 or, one must add,
the gods. To judge from the Confessions, the absence of Carthage and Dido would
certainly not have worried Augustine. Christian children so taught would also forfeit
a knowledge of what Ausonius referred to as pdBovs, x h d o p a ~ eta historiam ;j2fiction
and myth would be if anything a welcome loss to Christian educationalists, while
historiae-by which one should understand allusions of all kinds, concerning such
things as genealogy, religion, topography and so on-would hardly be missed,
especially in a basically fictional text. So much for enarratio auctorum or historice: but
the other main aim of grammatice, ratio loquendi,j3 could still be carried out. The
young could still learn their basic grammar from this text. Little of what Quintilian
recommended would be lost, and little of the sixfold function listed by Dionysius
Thrax:j4 x p & ~ o vdvdyvwois <VT~L/%)SK ~ T &npoow8lav, ~ E ~ T E P O<V& y ~ ) a i sK ~ T &706s
< v v n d p ~ o v ~ aT sO L ~ I T L K O ~ S~ p d n o u s ,T ~ L ' T O V yhwooL;)v TE ~ a Eo~opi&v
l npdx~ipos
&ndSoois, r h a p r o v a ~ v p o h o y l a sei;prais, n i p x ~ o vdvahoylas < ~ h o y i a p d s ,~ K T O V
K ~ L ' U L Sn o i ~ p d ~ w v 83
, K ~ ~ A ~ U T<UTL O V TTTCIVTWV TGV<V ~ ?T~XVTJ.
j The last mentioned,
pace Browning," was more aesthetic than ethical, at least if Quintilian is a guide;j6
but moral teaching of a sort-no less profound than the simple comments found in
Servius--could still be performed by pointing out examples of pietas, courage and so
forth in the etiolated text. In fact it looks as if moral or 'psychological' comment did
not bulk large in a commentary: a survey of a sample of Servius' notes puts only one
eighth of them into this category.57 Nothing more than this could be expected from
the g r a m r n a t i c u ~ ~even
~ by Julian, who, as has been seen, had a rather different
interest in morality. Proba's Vergil was, of course, a much abbreviated one, shorter
than the shortest book of the Aeneid, but this should not have been an impediment
to elementary learning. If all ancient teachers went through the text at the speed
implied by Priscian's P a r t i t i ~ n e ? ~('How many caesurae are there? w h a t are
they?.. . How many parts of speech are there?. .. How many nouns?', and so on, for
each and every verse), it might not have mattered at all.
It is unlikely that Proba thought that the idea might be extended to other authors.
In Lucan the gods would hardly be a problem; there was no need to work on him.
Likewise the popular prose authors Cicero and Sallust could be read in large swathes
without theological offence. Pastoral would later prove amenable to adaptation; but
authors such as Terence and Horace, Persius or ~ i v e n a lalthough
, variously used and
imitated by subsequent Christian writers, hardly lend themselves to centonization.
The transformed and sanitized Vergil, intended to serve the humble needs of the
grammaticus, would thus have been the only work of its peculiar kind, but it could
easily be accompanied by other texts from the repertoire of classical literature,
'' E. A. Clark and D. F. Hatch, The Golden Bough, the Oaken Cross: the Vergilian cento of
Faltonia Betitia Proba (American Academy of Religion: Texts and Translations 5 [1981]),
p p 7-8. Ausonius, Prof. 21.16, in the most recent text.
j3 Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 1.9.1.

j4 Dionysii Thracis Ars Grammatica, in Grammatici Graeci, G. Uhlig (ed.), (Leipzig, 1883),

sect. 1. 5 5 R. Browning, The Emperor Julian, (London, 1975), p. 171.

j6 Quintilian I 0 1.9.17, with F . H. Colson, C Q 8 (1914), 44f.

j7 R. R. Bolgar, The Classical Heritage and its Beneficiaries (Cambridge, 1954), p. 396 (n. 41).

ja See Seneca, Ep. 88.3, admittedly a rather exaggerated account of the gap between

grammaticus and philosopher. j9 Grammatici Latini (Keil), 3.459-5 15.

560 R. P. H. G R E E N

provided that Christians were not presented with such things as the scene in Terence's
Eunuchus which so scandalized AugustineGOand that references to pagan gods which
might embarrass sensitive pagans-as for example in Plautus' Amphitryo-were
avoided. In an emergency, then, the cento could have been a useful educational
instrument, even if it stood alone, and it is not unreasonable to argue that Proba
designed it as such. The later Christian writers already quoted provide a brief but
graphic testimony to Christian panic at Julian's decree; what seems to us an
illuminating but eccentric blip on the screen of fourth-century history must have
seemed to them a wicked attempt to put the clock back and perhaps the prelude to
a lifetime of persecution. Desperate situations often elicit desperate remedies; but
such things, when overtaken by events, are quickly forgotten, as Socrates tells us had
virtually happened to the efforts of the Apollinarii. It is hardly surprising+specially
since our knowledge of the period is patchy, Ammianus notwithstanding-that there
is no direct evidence to confirm that Proba's cento was designed as such a remedy.
What kept it alive when it was no longer needed was presumably her name and
family, and the severe lack of Christian literature in classical forms.
But was not the cento just a literary game? Why look for a serious purpose? Many
of the extant examples concern myths, and Proba's contemporary Ausonius, who
presumably had a wider acquaintance with the genre than we do--but not necessarily,
as will be seen, a knowledge of Proba's-thinks of the genre as comic. And although
in its published form its original purpose as an epithalamium of sorts for GratianG1
is not prominent, he had surely expected at least a few smiles, if not coarse laughs,
from the well-read. Proba's work, by contrast, can hardly be seen as anything but
perfectly serious if it is read in conjunction with her introduction, which may have
been written with an awareness of Juvencus' preface, and certainly brings to bear a
battery of Christian polemic.
A more considerable objection is that there is little or nothing in the preface to
suggest that the work was designed to be a school textbook. The combativeness of the
first half would hardly have commended it to the authorities, and can hardly belong
to the same phase. The second part (lines 29-55hwhich may have once stood
alone-is more conciliatory; although the severe corruption of the text in lines 38-42
and the inherent distortions of the cento form make the train of thought hard to
discern, she seems to be saying that Moses, like Vergil in his sixth eclogue, expounded
the beginnings of the world. Its closing lines suggest a didactic purpose, but if in 55
pueri innuptaeque puellae suggest the schoolroom, the preceding words matres atque
viri d o not. But what, one might well ask, could Proba be expected to say in a verse
preface if she was offering such an ingenious textbook? Its circumstances and the
instructions for its use would have been better presented in a prose preface; this may
well have happened, with the introduction as we know it coming from her pen a few
years later, when the dust had subsided.

THE INFLUENCE O F THE C E N T 0

As Socrates put it, providence intervened, and it is impossible to know if this shrewd
contribution to the debate had any effect in the year and a half before its repeal.
Perhaps it did not, for even if Julian had been minded to debate the matter, the curiae
entrusted with enforcing the law had their instructions, and pressure could easily be
applied. It was conceivably studied by the young Paulinus and Prudentius, and one
'O Confessions 1.16 (26).

'' As suggested by R. P. H. Green, The Works of Ausonius (Oxford, 1991), p. 518.

may imagine the young Jerome, if indeed he was a schoolboy at the time Julian died,@
delightedly flinging his copy of Proba out of the window when he heard the news: but
such speculation is unprofitable. What is particularly interesting is that the
cento-unlike the efforts of the Apollinarii in the East-survived, and was indeed
popular; there is a surprisingly large amount of evidence. There is, admittedly,
nothing (at least to the present writer) in the voluminous work of Ausonius, most of
it written later than 362, unless one accepts as evidence the rather commonplace
phrase studiis hominum in Ep. 3.17 Green (cf. hominum studiis in line 19 of Proba). But
the briefer work of Damasus, who died in 384, is more productive. The usual
assumption that he imitated P r ~ b is a ~ ~
confirmed not only by the chronological data
already defended, but by the nature of the echoes. A conservative list of these would
include 1.16 (also 12.4) ex hoste tropaea (cf. Proba, line 5); 2.5 pia foedera (cf. Proba,
line 1) ; 11.5 penetralia cordis (cf. Proba 11 : also in Juvencus 4.7, as Shanzer noted);
18.7 (also 48.4) foedera pacis (cf. Proba, 1). Three of the abovementioned phrases
derive from Lucan; and since, as we have seen, this author was familiar to Proba, but
not to Damasus, who had evidently read or at least remembered little of classical
a ~ t h o r s ,it' ~is overwhelmingly likely that Proba found the phrases in Lucan, and that
Damasus took them from her. The pattern of echoes is also significant. If they were
confined to one small work of Damasus, as Shanzer argued with the help of some
unconvincing parallels of her then one might contend that Proba was the
imitator; but they are not.
Later in the century there is more abundant evidence. Another cento, the pastorally
flavoured cento of Pomponius, may have been written at about this time." Then there
is the reference already noted-perhaps unconscious, but none the less eloquent for
this purpose-in the anonymous Carmen contrapaganos. This is not the place to enter
into the debate about the date and posthumous victim of this amazing broadsheet:
the leading candidates seem to be Praetextatus and F l a v i a n u ~ . 'There
~ are possible
quotations of her cento in Claudian and P a ~ l i n u sand, , ~ ~ as already noted, the latter
received a savage broadside from Jerome against centos in general, and perhaps
Proba's in p a r t i c ~ l a r . ' ~There is perhaps a further echo in Prudentius, contra
Symmachum 1.276 nectaris ambrosii: of course ambrosia and nectar are often
mentioned in the same breath, but this particular phrase, with the adjective ambrosius,
seems to be matched only in line 13 of Proba.'O Finally, there is the first preface to
Proba's cento (this is not the work of Proba herself), in which Arcadius is asked to
pass it on in due course Arcadio minori. From this rather strange phrase-which
cannot refer to a brother, as might be expected-Seeck deduced that the name of

'' Comm. in Abacuc, 3.14 (CCL 76A. 660). On the date of his birth, see J. N. D. Kelly,
Jerome: his life, writings and controversies (London, 1975), pp. 337-9 and A. D. Booth, Phoenix
33 (1979), 34653. 6 3 M. Ihm, Rh. Mus. N F 50 (1895), 195; Shanzer, 245.
6 4 M. Manitius, Rh. M . N F 45 (1890), 31617. " Shanzer, 245.
" For Pomponius, see Schenkl, op. cit. pp. 560f. and 609-615; and J. L. Vidal, Revue des
Etudes Augustiniennes 29 (1983), p. 236. For the unity of Proba and Pomponius in transmission,
see Matthews, op. cit., pp. 285-6.
'' Shanzer produces some new evidence for the former (pp. 24&44), but the chronological
problems will have to be discussed more clearly than they are in her n. 50. For the latter, see
J. F. Matthews, Historia 19 (1970), 464-79, reprinted in his Political Life and Culture in Late
Roman Society (London, 1985), as item VII. Another way to get round the lingering death in line
27 would be to take rependat as potential.
Cf. Claudian 28.396 scilicet ut Latio respersos sanguine currus (aspicerem) and line 6; and
Paulinus c. 10.25-8 ciere surdum Delphica Phoebum specu, vocare Musas numinafandique munus
munere indultum deipetere e nemoribus aut iugis and lines 13-15. 69 Cf. n. 19.
'O On the date of this work, see J. D. Harries, Latomus 43 (1984), 69-84.
562 R. P. H.G R E E N
Arcadius' son, the future Theodosius 11, was not yet known, and made the terminus
ante quem 401, the year of the child's birth.71 This may be correct; there was certainly
no metrical necessity to avoid the name Theodosius, which others happily
incorporated into the hexameter with synizesis of the first two vowels. But perhapsthe
terminus ante quem should be set earlier, for if these words were written between June
397 and April 401 the scribe would have been passing over one or more of Arcadius'
daughters; this is a little surprising, since it should not be assumed that such a book
would not be read by young women--especially perhaps, unless this point is
anachronistic, a book of female authorship. (It is interesting to note that the gift may
have borne fruit in the Homeric centos of Eudocia, wife of Theodosius II).72The
reference in Arcadio minori, then-which need not be taken as referring to a
male-may be intended to cover any children that Arcadius might have; if so, the
terminus ante quem is June 397, when Flacilla was born.
On this evidence the cento of Proba was known to Damasus, but particularly
influential in the mid 390s. The evidence of imitation in any particular writer is scanty,
and the similarities sometimes tenuous, but it is worth suggesting that the work was
the subject of a revival, one inspired by the noble Christian family73or by the emperor
Theodosius, who at least in his oily letter to Ausonius saw himself as a patron after
the model of A u g u ~ t u s or ,~~
perhaps indeed by both in concert.75A poem written
under the difficult circumstances of the reign of Julian might have seemed relevant to
the years during or immediately after the usurpation of Arbogast and Eugenius. And
at this time Christian poetry was still rather exiguous and experimental (witness the
efforts of Endelechius7' and the early works of Paulinus of Nola; Ausonius, though
i r n p ~ r t a n t wrote
, ~ ~ little); Proba's cento will have filled a gap before Paulinus and
Prudentius provided works of greater elegance and substance. With the new
competence and confidence of Christian poets Christian taste developed a new
sophistication, and at the same time Christian readers became more comfortable with
their Vergil. In this new atmosphere it is likely that Proba quickly fell out of favour.
It may be possible by close reading to extend the story of her influence into the fifth
century, though it would be a difficult task, especially as the use of Vergilian phrases
is so common: nothing, for example, should be inferred from the fact that both Proba
and Sedulius use the phrase nova progenies of Christ.78It has often been remarked
that at the end of the century Proba appears in the Gelasian list of apocryphal
books,79this shows that she was not completely forgotten, but it does not show that
the work was current, or even available. After that, it is clear from his notices that
Isidore treats her as a curiosity, and in the following century, at Corbie, she shared
a manuscript with the riddles of Symphosius and Aldhelm.80She may have been quite
well known-Aldhelm uses one line of hers to illustrate a metrical points1-but her
" Seeck, (op. cit. n. 12), p. xcvi. 7 2 Zonaras 13. 23. 39.
73 For their literary efforts see Shanzer, op. cit., p. 247.
7 4 R. P. H. Green, The Works of Ausonius, p. 707.
75 For a possible example of such literary co-operation, see R. P. H. Green, Respublica
Litterarum 1 (1978), p. 94 (n. 16).
76 Anthologia Latina 893 Riese, with W. Schmid, Rh. M. N F 96 (1953), 101-65.

7 7 See now R. P. H. Green, 'Ausonius at Prayer' in Ayres, L. (ed.), The Passionate Intellect,
Essays Presented to I. G.Kidd (New Brunswick, 1995), pp. 33343.
7 8 See P. Courcelle, op. cit., p. 298. Not that such inferences are always impossible; the fact
that similar bits of Vergil are used in obscene contexts may be evidence that Ausonius' Cento
Nuptialis was read in Africa by Luxorius (Anth. Lat. [Riese], 18. 64-5).
7 9 See P L 59. 162 centimetrum de Christo, Virgilianis compaginatum versibus, apocryphum.
Schenkl, op. cit., p. 516. Now St Petersburg Class. lat. F xiv 1.
Aldhelmi Opera, R. Ehwald (ed.), (MGH A A 15: Berlin, 1919), p. 188, line 31.
work is well on the way to becoming a pleasant and harmless diversion; and so,
notwithstanding its author's status as heroine in Boccaccio and Christine de Pisan, it
has remained ever since. But in her heyday the situation was very different. In its
generation her cento was hardly an 'entreprise c h i m e r i q ~ e ' ~ ~
University of St Andrews R. P. H. G R E E N
P. de Labriolle, Histoire de la Littbrature Latine Chre'tienne (Paris, 1920), p. 430. I am
grateful to my colleagues Jill Harries and Harry Hine for reading earlier versions of this paper
and making valuable suggestions, and to the CQ referee.
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Proba's Cento: Its Date, Purpose, and Reception
R. P. H. Green
The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 45, No. 2. (1995), pp. 551-563.
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[Footnotes]

5
Anician Women, the Cento of Proba, and Aristocratic Conversion in the Fourth Century
Hagith Sivan
Vigiliae Christianae, Vol. 47, No. 2. (Jun., 1993), pp. 140-157.
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36
The Emperor Julian and His School Law
B. Carmon Hardy
Church History, Vol. 37, No. 2. (Jun., 1968), pp. 131-143.
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39
The Academic Career of Ausonius
Alan D. Booth
Phoenix, Vol. 36, No. 4. (Winter, 1982), pp. 329-343.
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62
The Date of Jerome's Birth
Alan D. Booth
Phoenix, Vol. 33, No. 4. (Winter, 1979), pp. 346-353.
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