Faltonia Betitia Proba

Faltonia Betitia Proba was a Latin Roman Christian poet of the fourth century, a member of the aristocratic Petronii Probi family. She composed the Cento Vergilianus de laudibus Christi, a Virgilian cento in 694 lines that rearranges verses from Virgil, with minimal changes, into an epic poem centred on the life of Jesus. The poem moves from a proemium with invocation through episodes of the Old Testament and the New Testament to a short epilogue. A first poem by her, on the war between Constantius II and the usurper Magnentius, is lost, and the opening of the cento rejects that earlier pagan composition. Born into a pagan family, she converted to Christianity as an adult, and her husband and sons converted after her. Most modern scholars identify her, rather than her niece Anicia Faltonia Proba, as the author.