Brewer's: Cento

Poetry made up of lines borrowed from established authors. Ausonius has a nuptial idyll composed from verses selected from Virgil. (Latin, cento, patchwork.)

The best known are the Homerocentones (3 syl.), the Cento Virgilianus by Proba Falconia (4th century), and the Cento Nuptiälis of Ausonius. Metellus made hymns out of the Odes of Horace by this sort of patchwork. Of modern centos, the Comédie des Comédies, made up of extracts from Balzac, is pretty well known.

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