¹ See, for instance, Thraede, Klaus, “Untersuchungen zum Ursprung und zur Geschichte der christlichen Poesie I,” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 4 (1961): 108–27 and “Untersuchungen zum Ursprung und zur Geschichte der christlichen Poesie II,” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 5 (1962): 125–57; Witke, Charles, Numen Litterarum (Leiden, 1971); Kartschoke, Dieter, Bibeldichtung (Munich, 1975); Herzog, Reinhart, Bibelepik I (Munich, 1975); Roberts, Michael, Biblical Epic and Rhetorical Paraphrase in Late Antiquity (Liverpool, 1985); and Malamud, Martha, A Poetics of Transformation (Ithaca, 1989).Google Scholar

² I use the text of Karl Schenkl, CSEL 16 (1888), 609–15. The Versus ad Gratiam Domini is preserved only in the ninth- or tenth-century Codex Palatinus 1753. The name Pomponius is attested in Isidore of Seville (Etym. 1.39.26). Because this is the sole mention of the centonist's name, it remains somewhat uncertain. As there seems to me no reason to dismiss Isidore's evidence, however, I identify the poet as Pomponius. Among critics who have accepted the name are Umberto Moricca, Storia della letteratura cristiana (Turin, 1929), 848 and Green, R. P. H., “Proba's Cento: Its Date, Purpose, and Reception,” Classical Quarterly 45 (1995): 561.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³ On the Virgilian cento, see e.g. Ermini, Filippo, Il centone di Proba e la poesia centonaria latina (Rome, 1909); Bright, David F., “Theory and Practice in the Vergilian Cento,” Illinois Classical Studies 9 (1984): 79–90; and Salanitro, Giovanni, “Osidio Geta e la poesia centonaria,” in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, vol. 2.34.3, ed. Hasse, Wolfgang and Temporini, Hildegaard (Berlin, 1997), 2314–60. In antiquity, Ausonius, who himself composed a Cento Nuptialis ca. 373 on the occasion of Gratian's wedding, provides the sole poetics of the cento form, in an epistle to Axius Paulus which prefaces the work.Google Scholar

⁴ Along with the Versus ad Gratiam Domini, the Christian centos are the Cento Probae, written by Faltonia Betitia Proba (more on this text below), the anonymous De Verbi Incarnatione, and the De Ecclesia, written perhaps by one Mavortius. All sixteen centos are discussed by Schenkl (CSEL 16, 568–627), who provides the texts of the Christian centos alone.Google Scholar

⁵ “Comoedias legere, amatoria bucolicorum versuum verba cantare, tenere Vergilium” (Jer. Ep. 21.13.9).Google Scholar

⁶ “Sed tu, Tityre, parce provocare: / nam non invideo magisque miror, / qui, dum nil mereor precesque frustra / impendo, Meliboeus esse coepi” (Sid. Apoll. Ep. 8.9.5).Google Scholar

⁷ Anthologia Latina 893 Riese (hereafter AL and R). On the De Mortibus Boum , see Schmid, Wolfgang, “Tityrus Christianus,” Rheinisches Museum 96 (1953): 101–65.Google Scholar

⁸ Obviously, this theme has much to do with the theme of Christ as the Good Shepherd, derived largely from John 10:11–16.Google Scholar

⁹ The mimetic mode, or a narrative in which the characters alone speak, is not the only mode found in bucolic poetry, of course. Servius (ad Buc. 3.1) notes that all three modes, the mimetic, the diegetic (or third-person narration), and the mixed, appear in Virgil's Eclogues. Even so, the mimetic mode is characteristic of the bucolic genre; hence Endelechius's preservation of that mode allows his poem to be recognized formally as bucolic, despite the fact that the poem is written in a lyric meter.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Lines 105–8 of the De Mortibus Boum are particularly interesting: “signum, quod perhibent esse crucis dei, / magnis qui colitur solus in urbibus, / Christus, perpetui gloria numinis, / cuius filius unicus.” Here the city/country distinction which is so common in bucolic poetry is given a new turn. The lines may also indicate that Christianity was in late antiquity still a largely urban phenomenon, with the hold of paganism still being quite tenacious in the countryside and needing figures like Endelechius's Tityrus to convert the rustic populace.Google Scholar

¹¹ While scholarly consensus places the Versus ad Gratiam Domini in the fifth century, it is possible that the cento dates from the 390s. Centos seem to have been common in the decade; Jerome mentions them, or rather excoriates them, in Ep. 53.7, written to Paulinus of Nola in 394; and a scribe sent a copy of the Cento Probae to the emperor Arcadius sometime between 395–97. Schmid (“Tityrus Christianus,” 155 n. 135) argues that the De Mortibus Boum precedes the Versus ad Gratiam Domini, because, he contends, the cento is more decadent than Endelechius's work, and so “secondary,” or a text that responds to a Christian pastoral model already established by Endelechius. This subjective claim is to my mind unconvincing.Google Scholar

¹² “Carmina qui lusi pastorum audaxque iuventa, / Tityre, te patulae cecini sub tegmine fagi” (Virgil, , Georg. 4.565–66), and “Tityron antiquas ^∗passerque rediret ^∗ ad herbas” (Ovid, Ex. Pont. 4.16.33).Google Scholar

¹³ “Tityron ac segetes cecini Maro et arma virumque (Asclepiadus, AL 507 R, line 1); prima mihi Musa est sub fagi Tityrus umbra” (Vitalis, AL 555 R, line 1); “Tityre, te Latio cecinit mea fistula versu” (Vomanius, AL 558 R, line 1).Google Scholar

¹⁴ Tityrus also makes an appearance in the third century in Nemesianus's first Eclogue as well, while his interlocutor, Timetas, sings of Meliboeus (Nem. Ecl. 1.32–80).Google Scholar

¹⁵ The question of whether the first Eclogue as it now stands was the first Eclogue that Virgil composed and published is a vexed one; a negative response is relatively safe. Even so, as Coleman, Robert, ed. and comm., Vergil: Eclogues (Cambridge, 1977), 18–19 notes, there is no reason to doubt that the order of the poems in the first edition of the collected Eclogues, which likely dates to the early years of the Principate, was the one observed in the manuscript tradition. Ovid (A. 1.15.25) and Calpurnius Siculus (Ecl. 4.62–63) know the Tityrus poem as the first in the collection. In addition, two passages that I just cited, Virgil's own Georg. 4.566 and Vitalis's first-person Virgilian poem, suggest that the verse “Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi,” was shorthand for the Eclogues precisely because it was the incipit of the collection.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Programmatic umbrae appear, for example, in Virgil, Ecl. 1.83, 2.3, 5.5, and 10.75–77; Calpurnius Siculus, Ecl. 1.6; and the openings of Nemesianus's Ecl. 3 and 4. On such umbrae, see, e.g., Putnam, Michael C. J., Virgil's Pastoral Art: Studies in the Eclogues (Princeton, 1970), 389, where the shadows of Virgil's Ecl. 10.75–77 are of particular concern.Google Scholar

¹⁷ “Fortunate senex! hic inter flumina nota [from Ecl. 1.51] / et fontis sacros [from Ecl. 1.52] deductos [from Ecl. 6.5, with deductum altered] dicere versus [from Ecl. 5.2] / et cantare paras [from Ecl. 7.5, with pares altered] divino carmine, pastor [from Ecl. 6.67] / formonsi pecoris custos, formonsior ipse [from Ecl. 5.44]” (Vers. ad Grat. 3–6).Google Scholar

¹⁸ Pomponius takes 32 verse units from Virgil's Eclogues, 37 from the Georgics, and 145 from the Aeneid Google Scholar

¹⁹ I take this phrase from Elder, J. P., “Non Iniussa Cano: Virgil's Sixth Eclogue,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 65 (1961): 117.Google Scholar

²⁰ On the variety of the sixth Eclogue, see, e.g., Stewart, Zeph, “The Song of Silenus,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 63 (1959): 179–205, and Thomas, Richard, “Voices, Poetics, and Virgil's Sixth Eclogue,” in Mír Curad: Studies in Honor of Calvert Watkins (Innsbruck, 1998), 669–776. On the variety of the Eclogues in general, see Coleman, Vergil-Eclogues, 21–36. On the variety of bucolic poetry from Theocritus into the early modern period, see Rosenmeyer, Thomas G., The Green Cabinet (Berkeley, 1969), 1–30.Google Scholar

²¹ Fontaine, J., “La conversion du christianisme à la culture antique: la lecture chrétienne de l'univers bucolique de Virgile,” Bulletin Association Guillaume Budé (1979): 50–75, discusses the affinities between Christian themes and imagery and those of bucolic poetry, particularly that of Virgil. My concern is not with this general topic, however; to paraphrase Rosenmeyer (The Green Cabinet, 272) the issue that interests me is the management of traditional bucolic patterns for the expression of religious ideas, and how Pomponius's cento reflects this phenomenon.Google Scholar

²² Rosenmeyer (The Green Cabinet, 65–97) discusses the place and thematic importance of otium in bucolic poetry.Google Scholar

²³ On the Christian poets' use of such antonomasiae, see Roberts, Michael, “The Prologue to Avitus's De spiritalis historiae gestis: Christian Poetry and Poetic License,” Traditio 36 (1980): 402–4. In response to critics such as Harald Hagendahl (Augustine and the Latin Classics [Göteborg, 1967], 382–89) and Hudson-Williams, A. (“Virgil and the Christian Latin Poets,” Proceedings of the Virgil Society 6 [1966–67]: 14) who were troubled by the use of an antonomasia describing a pagan god to represent a Christian divinity, Roberts rightly notes that the trope was simply part of the early Christian linguistic code — that is, that the trope was a formal, decorative phenomenon, stripped of its original connotations.Google Scholar

²⁴ For a discussion of how Christian poets (including Pomponius) respond to Virgil's Ecl. 1.6, see Fontaine, , “La conversion,” 69–70 n. 21.Google Scholar

²⁵ This is one of the longer citations of Virgil in a cento, pagan or Christian. In his prefatory epistle to Paulus, Ausonius labels the citation of three consecutive Virgilian lines merae nugae (Aus. Cent. Nupt. praef . 27–28).Google Scholar

²⁶ CSEL 23, 270–74.Google Scholar

²⁷ “Myrta salix, abies, corylus, siler, ulmus, acernus / plaudit quaeque suis arbor amoena comis” (Ven. Fort. Carm. 3.9.23–24), and “Hinc tibi silva comis plaudit, hinc campus aristis, / hinc grates tacito palmite vitis agit. / si tibi nunc avium resonant virgulta susurro, / has inter minimus passer amore cano” (Ven. Fort. Carm. 3.9.43–46).Google Scholar

²⁸ The gardens, flowers, and groves in the two lines are elements of the conventional locus amoenus, as Libanius (Förster, 1.517.200).Google Scholar

²⁹ These poets respond largely to the Elysian fields of Aeneid 6; yet the pastoral vision and character of the lines is clear. Ricci, M. L. (“Motivi arcadi in alcuni virgiliani cristiani (719 a Rie.),” Atti convegno Virgiliano [1977]: 495–96) compares the imagery in Pomponius to Apoc. 22:2, where the urbs caelestis is described as a place of pastoral splendor. On Prudentius's pastoral descriptions of paradise, see Fontaine, J., “Trois variations de Prudence sur le thème du paradis,” Forschungen zur römischen Literatur: Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von Karl Büchner (Wiesbaden, 1970), 96–115.Google Scholar

³⁰ Obviously, such light imagery owes much to the figurative language of the Gospel of John.Google Scholar

³¹ On secondary biblical paraphrase, see Roberts, Michael, Biblical Epic and Rhetorical Paraphrase, 104–5, and Springer, Carl P. E., The Gospel as Epic in Late Antiquity (Leiden, 1988), 60, n. 26.Google Scholar

³² A date anywhere from 354 to 370 is possible for the Cento Probae. Among twentieth-century scholars, Ermini (Il centone di Proba, 13), selects 360 as the date of composition, Markus, R. A. (“Paganism, Christianity, and the Latin Classics in the Fourth Century,” in Latin Literature of the Fourth Century, ed. Binns, J.W. [London, 1974], 3) selects the 350s, and Bonaria, Marius (“Appunti per la storia della tradizione virgiliana nel IV secolo,” in Vergiliana: Storia della letteratura Christiana [Bari, 1929], 147) chooses a date around 362, arguing that Julian's edict of 17 June 362, which forbade Christians to teach rhetoric in the schools, led to Proba's work (i.e., Proba would appropriate Virgil in order that Christians might teach from him in Christian schools). Most recently, Green (“Proba's Cento,” 551–63), has endorsed Amatucci's position.Google Scholar

³³ Curiously, neither Proba nor Pomponius takes any units in this section from Silenus's cosmogonical account in Virgil's sixth Eclogue Google Scholar

³⁴ It may be that Pomponius also relied upon Proba to find the Virgilian units expressing Christian themes in lines 14–16 and 21, which I examined above. I should add that, in imitating the Cento Probae, Pomponius almost certainly had a manuscript of Proba before him. While Pomponius is likely to have memorized Virgil himself, the idea that he also committed Proba's rearranged Virgil to memory is difficult to accept.Google Scholar

³⁵ Curtius, Ernst Robert (European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Trask, William R. [Princeton, 1953], 459) calls the Versus ad Gratiam Domini “the earliest example of the ‘spiritual eclogue’ which was to become so popular in the Carolingian period and yet later.” Even a brief account of the works of the Carolingian poets, as well as later poets such as Spenser and the Mantuan, would lead me far afield of my current concerns; I note, therefore, only the place of Pomponius's cento at the beginning of the Christian bucolic tradition.Google Scholar