Aelia Sabina (fl. 3rd century CE) was a musician who primarily played the

hydraulis The water organ or hydraulic organ () (early types are sometimes called hydraulos, hydraulus or hydraula) is a type of pipe organ blown by air, where the power source pushing the air is derived by water from a natural source (e.g. by a waterfal ...

, an early version of the organ. She lived in Roman settlement of

Aquincum Aquincum (, ) was an ancient city, situated on the northeastern borders of the province of Pannonia within the Roman Empire. The ruins of the city can be found in Budapest, the capital city of Hungary. It is believed that Marcus Aurelius wrote ...

, located in modern-day

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

. Aelia Sabina was the wife of Titus Aelius Justus, a musician employed by the Second Auxiliary Legion of the

Roman army The Roman army () served ancient Rome and the Roman people, enduring through the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC), the Roman Republic (509–27 BC), and the Roman Empire (27 BC–AD 1453), including the Western Roman Empire (collapsed Fall of the W ...

. When she died at age 25, her husband wrote a lengthy, loving inscription on her tomb (discovered by archaeologists in the 1800s), in which he mourned her loss and praised her character and musical skill. This inscription reads:

References

{{Reflist 3rd-century Roman women 3rd-century women musicians