Proba: The Story of the First Christian Woman Poet
The objective of this project is to complete the monograph "Proba: The Story of the First Christian Woman Poet," which is to be published in Oxford University Press's Women in Antiquity series. Proba was a Roman poet from the fourth century who belonged to a politically influential senatorial family. Her education in grammar, rhetoric, and biblical scriptures is reflected in her Christian epic, Cento Vergilianus, the earliest known literary work by a Christian woman. The poem, written as a cento (Latin for patchwork), rearranges verses from Virgil’s "Eclogues", "Georgics", and "Aeneid" to retell biblical events. It is framed by prologues, digressions, and a concluding epilogue where the author reveals herself. The work has been preserved in over a hundred medieval and early modern manuscripts, and Proba was frequently cited in discussions about women's education. "Proba: The Story of the First Christian Woman Poet" is intended to be a scholarly biography exploring Proba's life, works, socio-cultural context, and literary legacy. The applicant has previously conducted research on Proba and is now applying for a six-month research period, from January to July 2025. During this time, two research visits are planned at the Oxford Centre for Late Antiquity and the Classical Centre at Corpus College, Oxford University, for academic exchange and to finalize the manuscript. The manuscript will be edited and proofread during the autumn, with a submission deadline of March 1, 2026.
Final report
Significant results and publications
– Monograph (manuscript): Proba: The Story of the First Christian Woman Poet (Oxford University Press, Women in Antiquity).
The book comprises four chapters devoted to the Roman poet Faltonia Betitia Proba (born c. 320), who composed a Christian poem of just under seven hundred verses drawn almost entirely from Publius Vergilius Maro’s three poetic works—the Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid. The poem is a cento—a ‘patchwork poem’—a genre fashionable in Late Antiquity, a period marked by new material conditions of book production and reading. Proba’s cento is the earliest extant work of its kind to portray Rome’s national poet as a Christian before his time. The poem opens with the words: ‘I will declare that Virgil sang about the pious deeds of Christ’
The book treats her life, the contemporary literary milieu, her poem, and its afterlife. The first two chapters are based on historical analysis, whereas the latter two are based on philological and literary-critical methods. The evidence comprises: (1) Proba’s Cento Vergilianus, studied from several perspectives, with particular concentration on narrative structure, form, poetic self-presentation, and intertextuality; (2) textual transmission and reception—manuscripts, early prints, and various forms of explicit and implicit references; (3) historical and prosopographical evidence illuminating Proba and her family: epigraphy, archaeological finds, the careers of male family members, and kinship ties.
The book challenges the assumption that Proba was dismissed by contemporary ecclesiastical authorities in two respects: first, it shows that the classical educational tradition represented by her poem remained vigorous well into the Christian era and was considerably less controversial than scholars have long supposed; secondly, it proposes, on partly new grounds, an earlier and more precise dating of the Cento Vergilianus—to the 350s. This places the poem in a period when the integration of classical Roman mythology and imagery with Christian thought was still widely accepted. A more orthodox, ascetically inflected Christianity was articulated only later—by the church fathers Jerome and Ambrose in the 380s. On this basis, the notion that Proba’s Christian use of Virgil met with ecclesiastical suspicion requires reconsideration, since it rests on a chronological fallacy.
The book further shows that Proba was active in public life in Rome in the 350s. Archaeological evidence, early sources, and textual analysis indicate that she and her husband acted as cultural patrons. Together they financed the construction of a small bath complex, with its water supply, in Ostia, and the construction of one of the earliest Christian churches in Rome—located in the very centre of the ancient city, between the Palatine and the Circus Maximus. Proba’s poem should likewise be understood as part of this effort to consolidate the position of her family, the Petronii, during a particularly turbulent phase in Rome’s history.
Proba’s exact birth date is unknown; analysis of her male relatives’ careers allows it to be placed, with reasonable confidence, in the period c. 315–320. On the basis of her sons’ years of service, her marriage and the formation of her household can plausibly be dated to c. 340–345. Her father and grandfather were active under Constantine the Great, the first Roman ruler to promote Christianity actively and to initiate the Christianisation of the imperial administration. Proba’s male kin played an active part in this transformation, and both her sons were influential politicians in the Roman Empire, as were their children and grandchildren, all of whom professed the Christian faith. Against this background, it is highly probable that Proba herself was an active participant in the same process.
The book also reconsiders the persistent view that Proba composed the Cento Vergilianus in order to instruct her sons in Christianity—a reading that fundamentally rests on the epilogue, where Proba addresses her ‘beloved husband’ and urges him to remain in the Christian faith, and to ensure that their descendants do likewise. While this passage indicates that Proba was married when she composed the poem, it does not, of itself, imply that the work was intended solely for domestic instruction, as many scholars have assumed since the editor of the first critical edition proposed this in 1888. In view of her sons’ careers and the structure of Roman education, it is implausible to suppose that their schooling rested on their mother’s poem. It is far more likely that they received advanced instruction from privately retained teachers in grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy.
The Cento Vergilianus itself constitutes evidence that the family—both the one into which Proba was born and the one she founded—valued learning for women as well as for men. The learned poem, constructed from lines not only from Virgil but also from poets of the Silver Age such as Lucan and Statius and from early Christian authors including Lactantius and Juvencus, bears witness to Proba’s sustained intellectual activity and to her household’s high regard for education and literature. The text further articulates an explicit poetic ambition to achieve literary immortality—an aspiration incompatible with the role of a marginalised home tutor, however pedagogically active. Both the poem’s content and the external evidence point to an audience well beyond the domestic sphere, and to an authorial role that cannot be reduced to home instruction. The older interpretation is therefore reductive and insufficiently grounded in the sources.
A conclusion more consistent with the evidence is that Proba inscribes both herself and her poem within the Roman tradition of exempla*. This emerges clearly in the passage following her account of Christ’s baptism: she interrupts the narrative, addresses her audience directly, gives an account of her own conversion, and exhorts her listeners to follow her example. The poem and Proba’s self-fashioning may thus be read as an* exemplum likely delivered within her immediate circle—her husband and sons, with their families—but also circulated beyond it. In later generations, women of the family emerge as prominent Christian figures: Anicia Faltonia Proba, Tyrrania, and Demetrias. The younger Proba and her granddaughter Demetrias corresponded with Augustine and Jerome on matters of faith and prayer, arguably exercising an authority partly grounded in the remembered example of an ancestress who had publicly articulated her conversion.
Finally, a cumulative assessment of the sources suggests that Proba most likely completed the full cursus of traditional Roman education—grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy. Her case thus offers a rare example of how a late-antique aristocratic woman’s education could have been organised, and provides valuable evidence for women’s educational opportunities in antiquity.
– Overview article: ‘Faltonia Betitia Proba’, Greek and Roman Humanities Encyclopedia, forthcoming in Trends in Classics (De Gruyter–Brill). The article presents the main findings of the study in a standard reference format for broad academic use.
– Public outreach: ‘Den lärda romarinnan som banade väg för kristendomen’ [‘The Learned Roman Woman Who Paved the Way for Christianity’], Svensk filosofi, 15 April 2025. A popular-science presentation in Swedish of the central research questions, with particular focus on Proba’s educational path.
Other results, dissemination and collaborations
I undertook extended research stays in Oxford with active participation in the Oxford Centre for Late Antiquity (OCLA). In spring 2025 I spent three periods in Oxford—one extended stay and two shorter visits. I attended the Late Roman Seminar at Corpus Christi College and presented my research on Proba at one of the term’s sessions. I also took part regularly in other OCLA events and established research contacts through seminars, lunches, and individual meetings. These collaborations are ongoing. I remain affiliated to OCLA and will continue to follow the seminar series remotely.
Presentations and lectures
– 27 Feb. 2025: seminar, ‘Proba and Education in Late Antiquity’, Late Roman Seminar, Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
– 21 May 2025: public lecture, ‘Proba’, Norrlands Nation, Uppsala (invited by the student societies Humfem and Litteraterna).
– 17 Sep. 2025: plenary lecture, ‘Playing with Virgil: Faltonia Betitia Proba’s Christian Cento’, and workshop, ‘Game Session: Composing a Cento’, ERC project JEUX, University of Oslo.
– 7 Oct. 2025: seminar, ‘The Early Life of a Christian Poet’, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies, Uppsala.
– 6 Mars. 2026 (forthcoming): plenary lecture, ‘Proba: The First Christian Woman Poet’, Classics Departmental Colloquium, Yale University.
Supervision and examining
– 25 Apr. 2025: co-supervisor and examiner on the dissertation committee for Cristalle Watson, Hermeneutical Strategies and Interpretatio Christiana in Proba’s Cento Vergilianus de laudibus Christi, at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
New research questions
– What patterns can be identified when Roman spouses appear as joint cultural patrons (in building inscriptions, donations, endowments, or book donations), and what do these patterns reveal about power relations and the distribution of roles within marriage in this period? How do Proba and Adelphius position themselves in this context?
– At what stages of fourth-century female education were philosophical—particularly Neoplatonic—concepts integrated, and in what ways do the Cento Vergilianus and its reception bear witness to this synthesis of reading, writing, and theological reflection?
– How might a coherent study bringing together fourth-century female intellectuals (e.g., Proba, Paula, Melania, and Marcella) illuminate both variation and common features in education, networks, and genre choices, as well as their roles in shaping a Roman-Christian literary culture?
– Monograph (manuscript): Proba: The Story of the First Christian Woman Poet (Oxford University Press, Women in Antiquity).
The book comprises four chapters devoted to the Roman poet Faltonia Betitia Proba (born c. 320), who composed a Christian poem of just under seven hundred verses drawn almost entirely from Publius Vergilius Maro’s three poetic works—the Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid. The poem is a cento—a ‘patchwork poem’—a genre fashionable in Late Antiquity, a period marked by new material conditions of book production and reading. Proba’s cento is the earliest extant work of its kind to portray Rome’s national poet as a Christian before his time. The poem opens with the words: ‘I will declare that Virgil sang about the pious deeds of Christ’
The book treats her life, the contemporary literary milieu, her poem, and its afterlife. The first two chapters are based on historical analysis, whereas the latter two are based on philological and literary-critical methods. The evidence comprises: (1) Proba’s Cento Vergilianus, studied from several perspectives, with particular concentration on narrative structure, form, poetic self-presentation, and intertextuality; (2) textual transmission and reception—manuscripts, early prints, and various forms of explicit and implicit references; (3) historical and prosopographical evidence illuminating Proba and her family: epigraphy, archaeological finds, the careers of male family members, and kinship ties.
The book challenges the assumption that Proba was dismissed by contemporary ecclesiastical authorities in two respects: first, it shows that the classical educational tradition represented by her poem remained vigorous well into the Christian era and was considerably less controversial than scholars have long supposed; secondly, it proposes, on partly new grounds, an earlier and more precise dating of the Cento Vergilianus—to the 350s. This places the poem in a period when the integration of classical Roman mythology and imagery with Christian thought was still widely accepted. A more orthodox, ascetically inflected Christianity was articulated only later—by the church fathers Jerome and Ambrose in the 380s. On this basis, the notion that Proba’s Christian use of Virgil met with ecclesiastical suspicion requires reconsideration, since it rests on a chronological fallacy.
The book further shows that Proba was active in public life in Rome in the 350s. Archaeological evidence, early sources, and textual analysis indicate that she and her husband acted as cultural patrons. Together they financed the construction of a small bath complex, with its water supply, in Ostia, and the construction of one of the earliest Christian churches in Rome—located in the very centre of the ancient city, between the Palatine and the Circus Maximus. Proba’s poem should likewise be understood as part of this effort to consolidate the position of her family, the Petronii, during a particularly turbulent phase in Rome’s history.
Proba’s exact birth date is unknown; analysis of her male relatives’ careers allows it to be placed, with reasonable confidence, in the period c. 315–320. On the basis of her sons’ years of service, her marriage and the formation of her household can plausibly be dated to c. 340–345. Her father and grandfather were active under Constantine the Great, the first Roman ruler to promote Christianity actively and to initiate the Christianisation of the imperial administration. Proba’s male kin played an active part in this transformation, and both her sons were influential politicians in the Roman Empire, as were their children and grandchildren, all of whom professed the Christian faith. Against this background, it is highly probable that Proba herself was an active participant in the same process.
The book also reconsiders the persistent view that Proba composed the Cento Vergilianus in order to instruct her sons in Christianity—a reading that fundamentally rests on the epilogue, where Proba addresses her ‘beloved husband’ and urges him to remain in the Christian faith, and to ensure that their descendants do likewise. While this passage indicates that Proba was married when she composed the poem, it does not, of itself, imply that the work was intended solely for domestic instruction, as many scholars have assumed since the editor of the first critical edition proposed this in 1888. In view of her sons’ careers and the structure of Roman education, it is implausible to suppose that their schooling rested on their mother’s poem. It is far more likely that they received advanced instruction from privately retained teachers in grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy.
The Cento Vergilianus itself constitutes evidence that the family—both the one into which Proba was born and the one she founded—valued learning for women as well as for men. The learned poem, constructed from lines not only from Virgil but also from poets of the Silver Age such as Lucan and Statius and from early Christian authors including Lactantius and Juvencus, bears witness to Proba’s sustained intellectual activity and to her household’s high regard for education and literature. The text further articulates an explicit poetic ambition to achieve literary immortality—an aspiration incompatible with the role of a marginalised home tutor, however pedagogically active. Both the poem’s content and the external evidence point to an audience well beyond the domestic sphere, and to an authorial role that cannot be reduced to home instruction. The older interpretation is therefore reductive and insufficiently grounded in the sources.
A conclusion more consistent with the evidence is that Proba inscribes both herself and her poem within the Roman tradition of exempla*. This emerges clearly in the passage following her account of Christ’s baptism: she interrupts the narrative, addresses her audience directly, gives an account of her own conversion, and exhorts her listeners to follow her example. The poem and Proba’s self-fashioning may thus be read as an* exemplum likely delivered within her immediate circle—her husband and sons, with their families—but also circulated beyond it. In later generations, women of the family emerge as prominent Christian figures: Anicia Faltonia Proba, Tyrrania, and Demetrias. The younger Proba and her granddaughter Demetrias corresponded with Augustine and Jerome on matters of faith and prayer, arguably exercising an authority partly grounded in the remembered example of an ancestress who had publicly articulated her conversion.
Finally, a cumulative assessment of the sources suggests that Proba most likely completed the full cursus of traditional Roman education—grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy. Her case thus offers a rare example of how a late-antique aristocratic woman’s education could have been organised, and provides valuable evidence for women’s educational opportunities in antiquity.
– Overview article: ‘Faltonia Betitia Proba’, Greek and Roman Humanities Encyclopedia, forthcoming in Trends in Classics (De Gruyter–Brill). The article presents the main findings of the study in a standard reference format for broad academic use.
– Public outreach: ‘Den lärda romarinnan som banade väg för kristendomen’ [‘The Learned Roman Woman Who Paved the Way for Christianity’], Svensk filosofi, 15 April 2025. A popular-science presentation in Swedish of the central research questions, with particular focus on Proba’s educational path.
Other results, dissemination and collaborations
I undertook extended research stays in Oxford with active participation in the Oxford Centre for Late Antiquity (OCLA). In spring 2025 I spent three periods in Oxford—one extended stay and two shorter visits. I attended the Late Roman Seminar at Corpus Christi College and presented my research on Proba at one of the term’s sessions. I also took part regularly in other OCLA events and established research contacts through seminars, lunches, and individual meetings. These collaborations are ongoing. I remain affiliated to OCLA and will continue to follow the seminar series remotely.
Presentations and lectures
– 27 Feb. 2025: seminar, ‘Proba and Education in Late Antiquity’, Late Roman Seminar, Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
– 21 May 2025: public lecture, ‘Proba’, Norrlands Nation, Uppsala (invited by the student societies Humfem and Litteraterna).
– 17 Sep. 2025: plenary lecture, ‘Playing with Virgil: Faltonia Betitia Proba’s Christian Cento’, and workshop, ‘Game Session: Composing a Cento’, ERC project JEUX, University of Oslo.
– 7 Oct. 2025: seminar, ‘The Early Life of a Christian Poet’, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies, Uppsala.
– 6 Mars. 2026 (forthcoming): plenary lecture, ‘Proba: The First Christian Woman Poet’, Classics Departmental Colloquium, Yale University.
Supervision and examining
– 25 Apr. 2025: co-supervisor and examiner on the dissertation committee for Cristalle Watson, Hermeneutical Strategies and Interpretatio Christiana in Proba’s Cento Vergilianus de laudibus Christi, at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
New research questions
– What patterns can be identified when Roman spouses appear as joint cultural patrons (in building inscriptions, donations, endowments, or book donations), and what do these patterns reveal about power relations and the distribution of roles within marriage in this period? How do Proba and Adelphius position themselves in this context?
– At what stages of fourth-century female education were philosophical—particularly Neoplatonic—concepts integrated, and in what ways do the Cento Vergilianus and its reception bear witness to this synthesis of reading, writing, and theological reflection?
– How might a coherent study bringing together fourth-century female intellectuals (e.g., Proba, Paula, Melania, and Marcella) illuminate both variation and common features in education, networks, and genre choices, as well as their roles in shaping a Roman-Christian literary culture?