PROBA. – A poetess, daughter of the consul Petronius Probianus (322) and wife of the urban prefect Adelphius (351), introduced into Christianity the fashion (v. Tertullian, De praescr. haer., 39: PL 4, 191-240) of Virgilian cento.
Her work, composed between 360 and 370, describes the contents of the Old and New Testaments using Virgilian phrases. Previously she had composed a poem on the conspiracy of Magnentius. Meanwhile she had converted to the Christian religion. The Decree of Pseudo-Gelasian condemned the use of expressing divine subjects with Virgilian verses (v. E. V. Dobschütz, Das decretum Gelasianum, Leipzig 1912, pp. 120, 209), though this did not hinder either the reading of P.’s verses in medieval monastic schools or admiration for the poetess herself (G. Boccaccio, De claris mulieribus, 95).