Proba the Prophet Mnemosyne Supplements late antique literature Editors David Bright (Emory) Scott McGill (Rice) Joseph Pucci (Brown) Editorial Board Laura Miguélez-Cavero (Oxford) Stratis Papaioannou (Brown) Aglae Pizzone (Geneva) Karla Pollmann (Kent) volume 378 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/mns-lal Proba the Prophet The Christian Virgilian Cento of Faltonia Betitia Proba By Sigrid Schottenius Cullhed leiden | boston Cover illustration: Grenoble, Bibliothèque Municipale, 352 (a. 1470) 373v. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cullhed, Sigrid Schottenius, author. Proba the Prophet : the Christian Virgilian Cento of Faltonia Betitia Proba / By Sigrid Schottenius Cullhed. pages cm. – (Mnemosyne supplements ; v. 378) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-26472-4 (hardback : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-90-04-28948-2 (e-book) 1. Proba, active 4th century. Cento. 2. Bible–In literature. 3. Centos–History and criticism. I. Proba, active 4th century. Cento. II. Title. PA6801.A49P828 2015 873'.01–dc23 2014047087 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 2214-5621 isbn 978-90-04-26472-4 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-28948-2 (e-book) Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. To Eric ∵ Contents Acknowledgements ix List of Figures x Introduction 1 1 Proba the Poet 18 2 Proba and Her Critics 56 3 Proba in the Republic of Women 82 4 The Confessions of Proba 113 5 Centonizing Genesis 137 6 The Gospel of Proba 158 Appendix: The Cento of Proba 190 Bibliography 233 Index Locorum 254 General Index 258 Acknowledgements Writing this book would not have been as pleasurable and perhaps not even possible without the support of a number of individuals and institutions, al- though—as always—the responsibility for any remaining errors is mine alone. I would like to thank Mats Malm, Karla Pollmann, Scott McGill, Nils Rücker, Monika Asztalos, Wim Verbaal, Marco Formisano, Henriette Harich-Schwarz- bauer and Stephen Hinds for valuable guidance at various stages of my work. Special thanks go to the anonymous referee for useful suggestions and improve- ments. I am grateful to my former colleagues at the Department of Literature, His- tory of Ideas and Religion at the University of Gothenburg, and especially Cecilia Rosengren, Bo Lindberg, Lisbeth Larsson, Beata Agrell and Håkan Möller. I am also thankful to Anders Cullhed who introduced me to Late Antique poetry, to Per Sandström and Marianne Wifstrand Schiebe for useful advice and Ingela Nilsson for encouragement and inspiring discussions. Chapters 2 and 5 will partly be published elsewhere (in Décadence ‘Decline and Fall’ or ‘Other Antiquity’?, eds M. Formisano and T. Fuhrer [Heidelberg: Winter Verlag 2014] and The Living Past: Recasting the Ancients in Late Latin Poetry, eds J. Pucci and S. McGill [Heidelberg: Winter Verlag]), and I am grate- ful for the improvements suggested by the editors of these volumes. I would also like to acknowledge the financial support provided by various foundations that enabled me to go abroad and study manuscripts: Harald och Tonny Hagen- dahls minnesfond, Åke Wibergs Stiftelse, Jacob Letterstedts Stipendiefond (Vit- terhetsakademien), Torsten och Ingrid Gihls fond (Vitterhetsakademien), and Magnus Bergvalls stiftelse. Last but not least, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my parents and my brother, and to my wonderful husband Eric for his constant intellectual stimulation, love and unfailing support. I dedicate this book to you. List of Figures 1 Proba as a young lady holding a scroll 35 2 Proba as a Sibyl holding a scroll and a codex 36 3 The Sibyl of Cumae holding a scroll and a codex 37 4 Proba as a scholar at her writing desk 38 5 Proba holding a rod pointed towards the sky 39 6 Proba at her desk holding a pen and a knife 40 7 Proba and Virgil between the Church and the Synagogue 41 8 Proba and Franc Vouloir waving to Virgil in a basket 42 9 Proba and Virgil with laurel in their hair 43 10 Proba writing with Rome and Virgil in the background 44 11 Proba between curtains with scroll and book in her hands 45 12 Medallions representing Proba and her husband Adelphius 46 Introduction Ashore there, when you reach the town of Cumae, Avernus’ murmuring forests, haunted lakes, You’ll see a spellbound prophetess, who sings In her deep cave of destinies, confiding Symbols and words to leaves. Whatever verse She writes, the virgin puts each leaf in order Back in the cave; unshuffled they remain; But when a faint breeze through a door ajar Comes to stir and scatter the light leaves, She never cares to catch them as they flutter Or to restore them, or to join the verses; Visitors, unenlightened, turn away And hate the Sibyl’s shrine. Aeneid 3.443–452, transl. fitzgerald 1983, 81 ∵ In the mid-fourth century, the Roman author Faltonia Betitia Proba wrote a poem in which she narrated key episodes of the Christian story of redemption entirely by recycling Virgilian verses. The work is a cento, which refers to the method of composition by which sentences and phrases are extracted from one or several texts and then put together in order to form a new text with a different meaning. We find passages written in a cento-like manner already in Old Comedy,1 but it is not until the third and fourth centuries ce that we find freestanding centos, such as Hosidius Geta’s Medea, a Virgilian centonization of the famous tragedy, and Ausonius’ Nuptial Cento. This development coincides with the transition in writing media from scroll to codex,2 and it is not difficult 1 See especially Ar. Ran. 1264–1268, 1285–1295 and 1309–1322 (by Euripides) and Pax 1089–1093, 1270–1274, 1282–1287 and 1286–1287 (by Homer); cf. Stemplinger 1912, 194–195; Bažil 2009, 50, n. 29; Rondholz 2012, 4–5. 2 Reynolds and Wilson 2013 (1968), 35: “The codex did not come into use for pagan literature until the second century; but it rapidly gained ground in the third, and triumphed in the fourth. […] The advantages of the codex over the roll were many: it was handier, more © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi: 10.1163/9789004289482_002 2 introduction to see the similarities between centos and the practice of frequent quotations of the Bible in patristic literature, which was supported by the new material conditions. The basic signification of the Latin word cento was ‘patchwork quilt’, but already in the second century bce the Roman comedian Plautus made use of it metaphorically in the phrase centones sarcire, “make up stories”.3 The earliest use of the word designating a poetic composition is found in Tertullian (c. 160–220), who refers to Hosidius Geta’s poem and authors of Homeric centos, “who stitch together (sarciunt) works of their own from the poems of Homer in a patchwork fashion (more centonario), uniting various scraps from here and there into one body”.4 These works are mentioned in order to illustrate the problem with certain biblical exegetes who Tertullian accuses of dishonestly reorganizing scriptural passages. Although there is no explicit critique of cento writing in itself, it would obviously be problematic if applied to the biblical texts. Irenaeus (2nd century ce) similarly criticizes the selective exegesis of the Gnostics by comparing it to Homeric centos. Such compositions could trick the less learned to believe that Homer composed his verses on the subject-matter (ὑπόθεσις) that had actually been introduced by the centonist, and to prove his point, he quotes a ten verses long Homeric cento on Eurystheus sending Hercules to liberate Cerberus from Pluto.5 The decontextualizing mode of reading the Scriptures that these fathers rejected was certainly applied to the pagan poets. In the third century, Minu- cius Felix ascribed awareness of Judeo-Christian doctrine to the Virgilian epics and pointed to the similarity between the account of the creation given by Anchises in the underworld (A 6.724–729) and Genesis. The opening lines, Prin- cipiocaelumacterras…spiritusintusalit matched the familiar “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”.6 Such correspondences were perceived as proof that Virgil possessed a natural knowledge of the Christian God.7 This is the vein in which Proba’s poem was composed: the Virgilian passages men- capacious, easier to consult, and it may have cost rather less to produce. Reference was made still easier by numbering the pages, and the addition of a list of contents guarded against forged interpolations and other interference with the text.” 3 Pl. Epid. 455. 4 Tert. praescr.haer. 39.4–7: qui de carminibus Homeri propria opera more centonario ex multis hinc inde compositis in unum sarciunt corpus. 5 Iren. adv. haer. 1.9.4; cf. 2.1.14. 6 Min. Fel. 19.2 7 Cf. Wiesen 1971; Buchheit 1988; Freund 2000, 135–139.