PONS PROBI
a bridge mentioned only in the Notitia (app.) and Pol. Silvius
(545). It was probably a new construction of the Emperor Probus
(276-282) rather than a rebuilding of an older bridge, and situated below
the other bridges as it stands last in the list.
It is now generally identified with a still later bridge, which crossed
the Tiber a little south of the north corner of the Aventine, and was called
in the Middle Ages pons marmoreus Theodosii (Mirab. II) and pons
Theodosii in ripa r(o)mea (Graphia 10). From the letters and reports of
Symmachus (
Ep. iv. 70;
v. 76; Relat. 25, 26) it appears that work was
begun on this bridge before 384 but not completed in 387, and while the
structure is called novus, it is usually believed to have been a rebuilding
of the pons Probi. This bridge was partially destroyed in the eleventh
century and almost entirely in 1484. The last traces of its piers were
removed from the bed of the river in 1878 (Jord. i. I. 421-422;
Gilb.
iii. 262;
Mitt. 1893, 320;
BC 1877, 167;
1892, 261,262; LR 16, 17;
DuP 86).