Ovid: Volume 1, Heroides and Amores

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by Ovid,

Translated by Frank J. Miller

Harvard University Press

Due/Published January 1988, 536 pages, cloth

ISBN 0674990455

(Loeb Classical Library)

The faithful Penelope, the forgiving Briseis, the reproachful Dido, the impassioned Medea--a procession of legendary women express their emotions and narrate their memories in the fictional letters to absent husbands and lovers that constitute Ovid's Heroides (Heroines). The moods and situations of these heroines vary widely, but their soliloquies are all dramatic. Six of the poems form exchanges, including an entertaining correspondence between Paris and Helen, and an exchange between Hero and Leander which immortalized their story. This volume also contains Ovid's Amores, three books of elegies ostensibly about the poet's love affair with his mistress Corinna (recalling the elegies of Propertius that revolve around Cynthia).