User:Douglas Coldwell/Sandboxes/119

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Faltonia Betitia Proba (born about 306, died about 366) was a Roman Christian poetess from Orte. She was the daughter of Petronius Probianus (consul 322) and the sister of Petronius Probinus (consul 341). She was married to Clodius Celsinus Adelphus, prefect of Rome. They had three children named Quintus Clodius Hermogenianus Olybrius (born about 335, died after 379) (aka Claudius Pontius Petronius Probus of Limoges; Consul), Adelphia Olybria, and another daughter who married a Lucius Valerius Septimius Bassus.

[edit] Works

Very little is known about her life other than she was tutored in the liberal arts. She knew Virgil's poems quite well and memorized most of them. She devised a scheme one day that the history of the Bible could be compiled in a pleasent easy to read verse. In her pious scheme she researched Bucolics, the Georgics, and the Aeneid. She would then mix various lines from each with great care and skill to complete a story. They were done expertly following all the rules of meter and the respect of verse that a connoisseur had trouble detecting the scheme. There is one poem, attributed to her by modern scholars, that survives reflecting this. It is a cento called Cento virgilianus and presents the Biblical story from the creation of the world up to the coming of the Holy Spirit by using 694 lines from Virgil. It is said to have been done so expertly that most experts would have trouble distinglishing this from Virgil himself since it reflects a scholarly knowledge of the Bible. This poem was declared apocryphal (not heretic, but also not allowed to be read in public) by Pope Gelasius I and is her only surviving work. She also wrote a Homeric cento with verses taken from Homer that was basically the same scheme. She was skilled in both the Greek and Latin languages.

[edit] References

  • Matthaeus Sylvagius, Liber de Tribus Peregrinis / Colloquia trium Peregrinorum (Venice, 1542)