Probus

• a Roman surname, Suet. Gram. 24.—Prŏbĭānus, a, um, adj., of or named from a Probus: purpura, Lampr. Alex. Sev. 40.

A Roman emperor (A.D. 276-282). He was a native of Sirmium in Pannonia, and rose to distinction by his military abilities. He was appointed, by the emperor Tacitus, governor of the whole East, and, upon the death of that sovereign, the purple was forced upon his acceptance by the armies of Syria. The downfall of Florianus (q.v.) speedily removed his only rival, and he was enthusiastically hailed by the united voice of the Senate, the people, and the legions. The reign of Probus presents a series of the most brilliant achievements. He defeated the barbarians on the frontiers of Gaul and Illyricum and in other parts of the Roman Empire, and put down the rebellions of Saturninus at Alexandria, and of Proculus and Bonosus in Gaul. But, after crushing all external and internal foes, he was killed at Sirmium by his own soldiers, who had risen in mutiny against him, because he had employed them in laborious public works. Probus was as just and virtuous as he was warlike, and is deservedly regarded as one of the greatest and best of the Roman emperors. His life is given in the Historia Augusta; see also Zosim. i. 64.

A famous Roman scholar and critic, born at Berytus, in Syria. He flourished in the second half of the first century A.D. He devoted almost all his attention to the archaic and classical literature of Rome, which had been previously neglected, and to the critical revision of the most important Roman poets, as Lucretius, Vergil, and Horace, after the manner of the Alexandrian scholars. Some of his criticisms on Vergil may possibly be preserved to us in a commentary to the Eclogues and Georgics, which bears his name. From a commentary, or criticism, on Persius we have his biography of that poet; and from his work De Notis we have an extract containing the abbreviations used for legal terms. Other grammatical writings bearing his name are the work of a grammarian of the fourth century. Probus ranks as the greatest of the Roman philologists. See Suet. Frag. ed. Reifferscheid, p. 138; Kübler, De Probi Comment. Verg. (Berlin, 1881); and Steub, De Probis Grammaticis (Jena, 1871). The treatise of the second Probus is printed in Keil's Grammatici Latini.