Does anyone have a better English translation of the opening lines than that below?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cento_(poetry)
A cento is a poetical work wholly composed of verses or passages taken from other authors; only disposed in a new form or order.
POET (1): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ausonius
Decimius Magnus Ausonius (ca. 310 – ca. 395) was a Latin poet and teacher of rhetoric at Burdigala (Bordeaux, France). For a time he was tutor to the future emperor Gratian, who afterwards bestowed the Consulship on him. His best-known poems are Mosella, a description of the river Moselle, and Ephemeris, an account of a typical day in his life. His many other verses show his concern for his family, friends, teachers and circle of well-to-do acquaintances, and his delight in the technical handling of meter.
The poem Mosella:
http://wiki.dickinson.edu/index.php?tit ... us_Mosella
POET (2): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faltonia_Betitia_Proba
WIKI wrote:
Faltonia Betitia Proba (c. 306/c. 315 - c. 353/c. 366) was a Latin Roman Christian poet, possibly the most influential Latin poet of Late Antiquity.
A member of one of the most influential aristocratic families, she composed the Cento vergilianus de laudibus Christi, a cento composed with verses by Virgil re-ordered to form an epic poem centred around the life of Jesus
Two poems are attributed to "Proba", and only one is extant. Most modern scholars identify Faltonia Betitia Proba as the author of these works, with the other possible identification being her niece Anicia Faltonia Proba.[citation needed]
Constantini bellum adversus Magnentium[edit source]
The first poem, now lost, is called Constantini bellum adversus Magnentium by the Codex Mutinensis. It dealt with the war between Roman Emperor Constantius II and the usurper Magnentius. Proba was involved to this war through her husband Clodius Celsinus Adelphus, who had been praefectus urbi of Rome in 351, that the same year Italy passed from the sphere of influence of Magnetius to Constantius after the Battle of Mursa Major.[3]
The existence of this first poem is based on the first verses of the second poem. Here Proba rejects her first Pagan composition, and scholars think that the Pagan poem was destroyed according to her will.[5]
De laudibus Christi[edit source]
After her conversion, around 362,[6] Proba composed a Christian epic poem, the Cento Vergilianus de laudibus Christi, also known as De laudibus Christi.
The poem is a Virgilian cento, a patchwork of verses extracted from several works of Virgil, with minimal modifications (in this case, with the introduction of Biblical names). The 694 lines are divided into a proemium with invocation (lines 1-55), episodes from the Old Testament (lines 56-345), episodes from the New Testament (lines 346-688) and the end.[7]
Proba was skilled in both Greek and Latin. 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 pleasant easy-to-read verse. She researched Bucolics, the Georgics, and the Aeneid and would then mix various lines from each with great care and skill to complete a story following all the rules of meter and the respect of verse that a connoisseur had trouble detecting the scheme. The resulting cento presents the Biblical story from the creation of the world up to the coming of the Holy Spirit by using 694 lines from Virgil. She also wrote a Homeric cento with verses taken from Homer that followed a similar scheme.
Jerome heavily criticized this work, claiming that an "old chatterbox" wanted "to teach Scriptures before understanding them", considering "the Christless Maro a Christian" (Letters 53.7, written from Bethlehem to Paulinus of Nola).[8] Pope Gelasius I (492-496) declared the De laudibus Christi an apocryphal; therefore, even though the poem was not considered heretical, its public reading was forbidden. Despite this prohibition, the work had some success. Emperors Arcadius (395-408) and Theodosius II (408-451) requested copies of the poem, for example, and Isidore of Seville praised the author of this work;[9] furthermore, during the Middle Ages this cento was widely used in education, leading Giovanni Boccaccio to include Proba on his list of famous women. The first printed edition of the De laudibus Christi, dating back to 1472, is possibly the first printed work composed by a woman.
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Proba's Introduction to Her Cento
Author(s): R. P. H. Green
Source: The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 47, No. 2 (1997), pp. 548-559
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/639689
English translation ....
Iam dudum temerasse duces pia foedera pacis,
regnandi miseros tenuit quos dira cupido, diversasque neces,
regum crudelia bella cognatasque acies,
pollutos caede parentum insignis clipeos nulloque ex hoste tropaea,
sanguine conspersos tulerat quos fama triumphos,
innumeris totiens viduatas civibus urbes,
confiteor, scripsi. satis est meminisse malorum.
nunc deus omnipotens, sacrum, precor,
accipe carmen aeternique tui septemplicis ora resolve
spiritus atque mei resera penetralia cordis,
arcana ut possim vatis Proba cuncta referre.
non nunc ambrosium cura est mihi quaerere nectar,
nec libet Aonio de vertice ducere Musas,
non mihi saxa loqui vanus persuadeat error laurigerosque sequi tripodas
et inania vota iurgantesque deos procerum victosque penates.
nullus enim labor est verbis extendere famam
atque hominum studiis parvam disquirere laudem.
Castalio sed fonte madens, imitata beatos quae sitiens
hausi sanctae libamina lucis hinc canere incipiam.
praesens deus, erige mentem: Vergilium cecinisse loquar pia munera Christi.
rem nulli obscuram repetens ab origine pergam,
si qua fides animo, si vera infusa per artus mens
agitat molem et toto se corpore miscet spiritus
et quantum non noxia corpora tardant terrenique
hebetant artus moribundaque membra.
Google Translate wrote:
Outraging religious leaders have been talking of peace,
a ruling which held miserable longing, and the various murders,
The wars of kings cognatasque line
defiled with the murder of the parents of the famous shield, no trophies,
whose fame had taken blood tempered triumphs
countless times, robbed citizens of cities,
I confess, I have written. is enough to remember the bad.
now God Almighty, so sacred, I pray,
Take your eternal song of the seven mouths open
Unlock the recesses of my heart and spirit,
Prove that I can relate all the secrets of the bard.
now do not take care for me to seek ambrosial nectar;
Aonian not want to lead from the top of the Muses,
vain to convince me not to speak rocks error laurelled follow tripod
and empty vows iurgantesque tall gods vanquished gods.
for no one to stretch out the words of the report of the task is
and human studies to investigate a little praise.
Whereas but wet spring, which followed those happy thirsty
I drank from the holy offerings of light begin to sing.
God is present, set up the mind of Christ 's Virgil sung speak.
nothing back from obscure origins go,
if there be faith in my mind, if the truths the mind is infused through the limbs,
is driven by the mass and total body blends the spirit
and not as harmful bodies stayed his earthly
dull mortal limbs.