Number

lt.008

Title

Vlixes Penelopae  (Pertulit ad miserum tandem tua casus Vlixen)

Name of the Portuguese translation

Resposta dUlises a Penelope tirada do Sabyno de latim em linguajem por Joam Rroiz de Luçena (pt.008)

Author

Aulus Sabinus or Angelo Sani di Cure (Angelo Sabino)

Language

Latin

Characterization

Poetic epistle addressed by Ulysses to Penelope, revealing the end of the Trojan War and the adventures he is going by on the return home. In the letter, the hero confesses to his wife his eternal love that overcomes any attempt of female seduction, and promises revenge against all those who, at home, make her suffer.

There is no certainty as to the authorship of the Latin original text. According to Ovid (Am. 2.18.27-34), six replies to the letters of the Heroides were composed by his contemporary, Aulus Sabinus. In the fifteenth century, specifically in the edition of the Heroides of Ovid carried out by Stefano Corallo (Parma, 1477), three of these letters are mentioned as belonging to Aulus Sabino and among them is the response from Ulysses to Penelope (Knox, 2009: 215-216; Dörrie,: 104-105; Ruggieri, 1931: 226, n.2 states that the first edition might have been in 1474 - see Tarrío, 2002: 378). If Aulus Sabinus was the author of this poem, it would have been composed in the first century BC. However, modern scholars believe the surviving text is apocryphal and has been written by the humanist poet Angelo Sani di Cure or Angelo Sabino in the 1460s–1470s (Sabbadini, 1905: 176; Knox, 2009, 216).

 The translation in Cancioneiro Geral does not clarify any of the hypothesis because Lucena only mentions the name 'Sabino', common to both poets.

Date

1^st century BC (if the author is Aulus Sabinus) or second half of the fifteenth century (if the author is the humanist poet Angelo Sani di Cure)

Place

Unknown

Extant witnesses

In Portugal there are two Italian editions that keep the Latin text: Res. 3194 (1511) and Res.5940//1 P. (1502) of the National Library of Portugal (see Tarrío, 2002: 379).

Studies

GEISE, B. (2001), Die Tres Epistulae A. Sabini - antik oder humanistisch? In Osnabrücker Online-Beiträge zu den Altertumswissenschaften 5. In http://varusforschung.geschichte-multimedial.net/documents/oob005.pdf (acedido a 14/01/2013).

GLÄSER, Carl Eduard (1842), "Der Dichter Sabinus," Rheinisches Museum 1, 437–442.

HARDIE, Philip R. (2002), The Cambridge Companion to Ovid. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

KNOX, E. (2009), A Companion to Ovid. Oxford: Blackwell.

PENDERGAST, W. H. (1969), “Sabinus, Imitator of Ovid,” Classical Folia XXIII, 246–53

RUGGIERI, Jole (1931), Il Canzonieri di Resende, Genebra: Leo S. Olschki, S. A. Éditeur.

SABBADINI, Remigio (1905), Le scoperte dei codici latini e greci ne' secoli XIV e XV. Florença: G. C. Sansoni.

TARRÍO, A. M. Sánchez (2002). O obscuro fidalgo João Rodrigues de Lucena, tradutor das Heroides. Euphrosyne, 30, 371-384.