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Heroides

The Heroides, a collection of fifteen epistolary poems by Ovid, features letters from aggrieved heroines of mythology to their neglectful lovers. It includes a further set of six poems known as the Double Heroides, which present exchanges between lovers and their beloveds. Although initially undervalued, the work has been re-evaluated for its innovative literary form and Ovid's originality in creating a new genre of poetry.

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20 views2 pages

Heroides

The Heroides, a collection of fifteen epistolary poems by Ovid, features letters from aggrieved heroines of mythology to their neglectful lovers. It includes a further set of six poems known as the Double Heroides, which present exchanges between lovers and their beloveds. Although initially undervalued, the work has been re-evaluated for its innovative literary form and Ovid's originality in creating a new genre of poetry.

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Ѓоре Гаќев
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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The Heroides (The Heroines),[1] or Epistulae Heroidum (Letters of Heroines), is 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, neglected, or abandoned them. A further set of
six poems, widely known as the Double Heroides and numbered 16 to 21 in modern
scholarly editions, follows these individual letters and presents three separate
exchanges of paired epistles: one each from a heroic lover to his absent beloved and
from the heroine in return.

The Heroides were long held in low esteem by literary scholars[2] but, like other works
by Ovid, were re-evaluated more positively in the late 20th century.[3] Arguably some
of Ovid's most influential works (see below), one point that has greatly contributed to
their mystique—and to the reverberations they have produced within the writings of
later generations—is directly attributable to Ovid himself. In the third book of his Ars
Amatoria, Ovid argues that in writing these fictional epistolary poems in
the personae of famous heroines, rather than from a first-person perspective, he
created an entirely new literary genre. Recommending parts of his poetic output as
suitable reading material to his assumed audience of Roman women, Ovid wrote of
his Heroides: "vel tibi composita cantetur Epistola voce: | ignotum hoc aliis ille
novavit opus" (Ars Amatoria 3.345–6: "Or let an Epistle be sung out by you in
practiced voice: unknown to others, he [sc. Ovid] originated this sort of
composition"). The full extent of Ovid's originality in this matter has been a point of
scholarly contention: E. J. Kenney, for instance, notes that "novavit is ambiguous:
either 'invented' or 'renewed', cunningly obscuring without explicitly disclaiming
O[vid]'s debt to Propertius' Arethusa (4.3) for the original idea."[4] In spite of various
interpretations of Propertius 4.3, consensus nevertheless concedes to Ovid much of
the credit in the thorough exploration of what was then a highly innovative poetic
form.

Dating and authenticity


[edit]
The exact dating of the Heroides, as with the overall chronology of the Ovidian
corpus, remains a matter of debate. As Peter E. Knox notes, "[t]here is no consensus
about the relative chronology of this [sc. early] phase of O[vid]'s career," a position
which has not advanced significantly since that comment was made.[5] Exact dating is
hindered not only by a lack of evidence, but by the fact that much of what is known at
all comes from Ovid's own poetry. One passage in the second book of
Ovid's Amores (Am.) has been adduced especially often in this context:

quod licet, aut artes teneri I do what I may—either profess the arts of
profitemur Amoris tender love
(ei mihi, praeceptis urgeor ipse (Alas! I'm beset by my own teachings!)
meis!) Or write what's rendered in the words of
aut quod Penelopes verbis Penelope to her Ulysses,
reddatur Ulixi, And your tearful tale too, forsaken Phyllis—
scribimus et lacrimas, Phylli relicta, That which Paris and Macareus, and that also
tuas, which oh-so-ungrateful Jason,
quod Paris et Macareus et quod And Hippolytus's sire, and Hippolytus himself
male gratus Iason may read—
Hippolytique parens Hippolytusque And what pitiable Dido, holding now the blade
legant, unsheathed,
quodque tenens strictum Dido Might say, and so too †that woman of Lesbos,
miserabilis ensem beloved of the Aonian lyre.†[6]
dicat et †Aoniae Lesbis amata
lyrae.†

—Am. 2.18.19–26
Knox notes that "[t]his passage ... provides the only external evidence for the date of
composition of the Heroides listed here. The only collection of Heroides attested by
O[vid] therefore antedates at least the second edition of the Amores (c. 2 BC), and
probably the first (c. 16 BC) ..."[7] On this view, the most probable date
of composition for at least the majority of the collection of single Heroides ranges
between c. 25 and 16 BC, if indeed their eventual publication predated that of the
assumed first edition of the Amores in that latter year.[8] Regardless of absolute
dating, the evidence nonetheless suggests that the single Heroides represent some
of Ovid's earliest poetic efforts.

Questions of authenticity, however, have often inhibited the literary appreciation of


these poems.[9] Joseph Farrell identifies three distinct issues of importance to the
collection in this regard: (1) individual interpolations within single poems, (2) the
authorship of entire poems by a possible Ovidian impersonator, and (3) the relation
of the Double Heroides to the singles, coupled with the authenticity of that secondary
collection.[2] Discussion of these issues has been a focus, even if tangentially, of
many treatments of the Heroides in recent memory.

As an example following these lines, for some time scholars debated over whether
this passage from the Amores—corroborating, as it does, only the existence
of Her. 1–2, 4–7, 10–11, and very possibly of 12, 13,[10] and 15—could be cited fairly
as evidence for the inauthenticity of at least the letters of Briseis (3), Hermione (8),
Deianira (9), and Hypermnestra (14), if not also those of Medea (12), Laodamia (13),
and Sappho (15).[11] Stephen Hinds argues, however, that this list constitutes only
a poetic catalogue, in which there was no need for Ovid to have enumerated every
individual epistle.[12] This assertion has been widely persuasive, and the tendency
amongst scholarly readings of the later 1990s and following has been towards
careful and insightful literary explication of individual letters, either proceeding under
the assumption of, or with an eye towards proving, Ovidian authorship. Other
studies, eschewing direct engagement with this issue in favour of highlighting the
more ingenious elements—and thereby demonstrating the high value—of individual
poems in the collection, have essentially subsumed the authenticity debate,
implicating it through a tacit equation of high literary quality with Ovidian authorship.
This trend is visible especially in the most recent monographs on the Heroides.[13] On
the other hand, some scholars have taken a completely different route, ascribing the
whole collection to one[14] or two[15] Ovidian imitators (the catalogue in Am. 2.18, as
well as Ars am. 3.345–6 and Epistulae ex Ponto 4.16.13–14, would then be
interpolations introduced to establish the imitations as authentic Ovid).

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