Heroides

Summary

The Heroides (Heroines) is a collection of twenty-one verse letters in elegiac couplets, written as if by women of myth and legend to the men who have left, betrayed or endangered them, together with three pairs of letters exchanged between lovers. Ovid claimed to have invented the form. The first fifteen letters are single. Penelope writes to Ulysses, years after Troy has fallen, begging him to come home and describing the suitors and the old Laertes. Phyllis, a Thracian princess, reproaches Demophoon, son of Theseus, who sailed away promising to return within a month, and resolves to die. Briseis, the captive taken from Achilles, begs him to reclaim her and return to the fighting. Phaedra confesses her love to her stepson Hippolytus. Oenone, the nymph whom Paris abandoned for Helen, reminds him of their life on Mount Ida and laments that the healing arts Apollo taught her cannot cure love. Hypsipyle, queen of Lemnos, writes to Jason, who left her with twin sons and has now returned from Colchis with Medea. Dido, about to die on her pyre, pleads with Aeneas not to sail for Italy and composes her own epitaph. Hermione asks Orestes to rescue her from Pyrrhus. Deianira, having sent Hercules the robe smeared with the centaur's blood, learns of its effect as she writes. Ariadne, waking alone on the shore of Naxos, calls after Theseus's vanishing sail. Canace writes to her brother Macareus as she obeys her father's order to die. Medea recalls how she saved Jason in Colchis and threatens vengeance on his new marriage. Laodamia, wife of Protesilaus, fears for her husband at Troy and keeps a waxen image of him. Hypermnestra, the one daughter of Danaus who refused to kill her husband on the wedding night, writes from prison to Lynceus, whom she spared. Sappho, the poet of Lesbos, writes to the young ferryman Phaon and considers the leap from the Leucadian cliff. The last six letters are paired. Paris writes to Helen in Sparta urging her to leave with him, and Helen answers with hesitation that already leans toward consent. Leander writes from Abydos, kept by storms from swimming the Hellespont, and Hero answers from Sestos, fearing for him. Acontius reminds Cydippe of the apple on which he wrote an oath that she read aloud in Diana's temple, and Cydippe replies from a sickbed, worn by a fever she believes the goddess has sent. The authorship of the Sappho letter and of the paired letters has been debated by scholars. The library text is Grant Showerman's complete prose translation of 1914, without his notes or the facing Latin.

Top Lessons

• The other side of the epic

  Ovid retells the stories of Homer, Virgil and the tragedians from the point of view of the women left behind: Penelope weaving at home, Briseis in the camp, Dido on her pyre. The letters show that every heroic journey leaves someone waiting.

• Faithfulness under pressure

  Penelope waits for twenty years, and Hypermnestra accepts chains rather than kill her husband. Ovid gives their fidelity eloquent voice and contrasts it with the broken promises of Demophoon, Jason and Theseus.

• Persuasion and self-deception

  Ovid was trained in rhetoric, and each letter is an argument. Paris uses flattery and promises; Helen's reply raises objections that her own words gradually undo; Acontius defends a trick as an act of love. The letters teach readers to watch how arguments serve desire.

• Love as an illness

  Oenone, taught healing by Apollo, admits that love cannot be cured by herbs; Cydippe lies wasted with a fever that physicians cannot explain. The letters belong to a long tradition that describes love as a sickness of body and mind.

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Medical Lens

The Heroides are an important early source for love as a disorder of body and mind, the condition later physicians called lovesickness (amor hereos). The heroines describe sleeplessness, pallor, wasting, trembling, loss of appetite and obsessive thought of the beloved, the same signs listed by ancient and medieval medical writers. Oenone, a healer taught by Apollo, admits that love cannot be cured by herbs, a line much repeated in later medical and literary writing on the subject. Cydippe's letter gives a patient's account of a lingering fever unexplained by physicians, which she and Acontius each interpret morally, as divine punishment or as love; the story of Acontius and Cydippe was also told by Callimachus. Several heroines contemplate death, Phyllis, Dido, Canace, Deianira and Sappho, and their letters belong to the literary history of despair in love; they are rhetorical compositions, not case reports. Medea's and Hypsipyle's letters refer to herbs, incantations and waxen images, the magical pharmacology of the ancient world.

• Letter V (Oenone to Paris)

  Oenone recalls that Apollo taught her healing and every useful herb, yet she cannot cure her own love.

• Letter XXI (Cydippe to Acontius)

  Cydippe describes her wasting, pallor and a fever that returns as her wedding approaches; the nurse guards her door and physicians cannot help.

• Letter VII (Dido to Aeneas)

  Dido, sleepless and consumed by love, prepares the pyre and writes her own epitaph.

• Letter VI (Hypsipyle to Jason)

  Hypsipyle accuses Medea of winning Jason by spells, baneful herbs and a waxen image pierced with a needle.

• Letter XV (Sappho to Phaon)

  Sappho describes weeping, sleeplessness and dreams of Phaon, and is told of the leap from the Leucadian rock as a cure for love.