Sabinus was a Latin poet

Latin literature

Latin literature includes the essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings of the ancient Romans. In many ways, it seems to be a continuation of Greek literature, using many of the same forms...

 and friend of Ovid

Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...

. He is known only from two passages of Ovid's works.

At Amores 2.18.27—34, Ovid says that Sabinus has written responses to six of Ovid's Heroïdes

Heroides

The Heroides , or Epistulae Heroidum , are a collection of fifteen epistolary poems composed by Ovid in Latin elegiac couplets, and presented as though written by a selection of aggrieved heroines of Greek and Roman mythology, in address to their heroic lovers who have in some way mistreated,...

, the collection of elegiac

Elegiac couplet

The elegiac couplet is a poetic form used by Greek lyric poets for a variety of themes usually of smaller scale than the epic. Roman poets, particularly Ovid, adopted the same form in Latin many years later...

 epistles each written in the person of a legendary woman to her absent male lover. These are enumerated as Ulysses

Odysseus

Odysseus or Ulysses was a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in the Epic Cycle....

 to Penelope

Penelope

In Homer's Odyssey, Penelope is the faithful wife of Odysseus, who keeps her suitors at bay in his long absence and is eventually reunited with him....

, in response to Heroïdes 1; Hippolytus

Hippolytus (mythology)

thumb|260px|The Death of Hippolytus, by [[Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema]] .In Greek mythology, Hippolytus was a son of Theseus and either Antiope or Hippolyte...

 to Phaedra

Phaedra (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Phaedra is the daughter of Minos and Pasiphaë, wife of Theseus and the mother of Demophon of Athens and Acamas. Phaedra's name derives from the Greek word φαιδρός , which meant "bright"....

 (H. 4); Aeneas

Aeneas

Aeneas , in Greco-Roman mythology, was a Trojan hero, the son of the prince Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite. His father was the second cousin of King Priam of Troy, making Aeneas Priam's second cousin, once removed. The journey of Aeneas from Troy , which led to the founding a hamlet south of...

 to Dido (H. 7); Demophoon

Demophon (King of Athens)

Demophon was a king of Athens, according to Pindar, son of Theseus and Phaedra, brother of Acamas. Some say that Demophon's mother was Iope, daughter of Iphicles. He fought in the Trojan War and was among those who entered the city in the Trojan Horse...

 to Phyllis

Phyllis

Phyllis is a character in Greek mythology, daughter of a Thracian king . She married Demophon, King of Athens and son of Theseus, while he stopped in Thrace on his journey home from the Trojan War....

 (H. 2); Jason

Jason

Jason was a late ancient Greek mythological hero from the late 10th Century BC, famous as the leader of the Argonauts and their quest for the Golden Fleece. He was the son of Aeson, the rightful king of Iolcus...

 to Hypsipyle

Hypsipyle

In Greek mythology, Hypsipyle was the Queen of Lemnos, daughter of Thoas and Myrina.During her reign, Aphrodite cursed the women of the island for having neglected her shrines. All the women developed extreme body odor that made them repugnant to the men of the nation. The men took up with...

 (H. 6); and (presumably) Phaon

Phaon

Phaon in Greek mythology was a boatman of Mitylene in Lesbos. He was old and ugly when Aphrodite came to his boat. She put on the guise of a crone. Phaon ferried her over to Asia Minor and accepted no payment for doing so. In return, she gave him a box of ointment. When he rubbed it on himself, he...

 to Sappho

Sappho

Sappho was an Ancient Greek poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC, but little is known for certain about her life...

 (H. 15).

Three of these Ovidian responses by Sabinus — the letters from Ulysses and Demophoon, along with a letter from Paris

Paris (mythology)

Paris , the son of Priam, king of Troy, appears in a number of Greek legends. Probably the best-known was his elopement with Helen, queen of Sparta, this being one of the immediate causes of the Trojan War...

 to Oenone

Oenone

In Greek mythology, Oenone was the first wife of Paris of Troy, whom he abandoned for the queen Helen of Sparta.Oenone was a mountain nymph on Mount Ida in Phrygia, a mountain associated with the Mother Goddess Cybele, alternatively Rhea. Her father was Cebren, a river-god...

 (Heroïdes 5) — are printed in Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 editions of the Heroïdes. Modern scholars believe them to have actually been written in the 1460s–1470s by the humanist

Renaissance humanism

Renaissance humanism was an activity of cultural and educational reform engaged by scholars, writers, and civic leaders who are today known as Renaissance humanists. It developed during the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries, and was a response to the challenge of Mediæval...

 Angelo Sabino

Angelo Sabino

Angelo Sabino or in Latin Angelus Sabinus was an Italian Renaissance humanist, poet laureate, classical philologist, Ovidian impersonator, and putative rogue....

, who was a poet and editor of classical texts. His edition advertised the inclusion of poems by "Aulus Sabinus," and though this has sometimes been taken as the ancient poet's praenomen

Praenomen

The praenomen was a personal name chosen by the parents of a Roman child. It was first bestowed on the dies lustricus , the eighth day after the birth of a girl, or the ninth day after the birth of a boy...

, it was probably part of Sabino's invention.

Sabinus is also among some thirty contemporary poets mentioned by Ovid in his verse letters from exile (collected as the Tristia

Tristia

The Tristia is a collection of letters written in elegiac couplets by the Augustan poet Ovid during his exile from Rome. Despite five books of his copious bewailing of his fate, the immediate cause of Augustus's banishment of the greatest living Latin poet to Pontus in 8 AD remains a mystery...

and Epistulae ex Ponto

Epistulae ex Ponto

Epistulae ex Ponto is a work of Ovid, in four books. It is especially important for our knowledge of Scythia Minor in his time....

). Ovid's bitter last letter ex Ponto, written in 15 AD, alludes to Sabinus's response from Ulysses and gives titles for two other works by him, Troezen and Dierum Opus, the latter of which is said to have been left unfinished upon his recent and untimely death.

The 19th-century scholar Carl Gläser conjectured that the Troezen was an epic poem containing a history of the birth and adventures of Theseus

Theseus

For other uses, see Theseus Theseus was the mythical founder-king of Athens, son of Aethra, and fathered by Aegeus and Poseidon, both of whom Aethra had slept with in one night. Theseus was a founder-hero, like Perseus, Cadmus, or Heracles, all of whom battled and overcame foes that were...

, whose birthplace was Troezen

Troezen

Troezen is a small town and a former municipality in the northeastern Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Troizinia, of which it is a municipal unit....

, up to the time of his arrival at his father's court at Athens

Athens

Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

. The Dierum Opus ("Days' Work") he regarded as a continuation of Ovid's calendrical Fasti

Fasti (poem)

The Fasti is a six-book Latin poem by Ovid believed to have been left unfinished when the poet was exiled to Tomis by the emperor Augustus in the year 8...

, which was left unfinished when he died in exile. Since Sabinus died before Ovid, this may be problematic.