Ovid Heroides: A Selection

This is the OCR-endorsed publication from Bloomsbury for the Latin A-Level (Group 4) prescription of Ovid’s Heroides, giving full Latin text, commentary and vocabulary for Heroides VI, lines 1-100 and 127-64, and X, lines 1-76 and 119-50. A detailed introduction covers the prescribed text to be read in English, placing the poems in their Roman literary context.

The heroines of the Heroides are women in love who can do nothing but write sad verse letters to their faithless lovers across the sea. They tell their stories and express their feelings in poetry of great power and psychological subtlety. Hypsipyle (in VI) and Ariadne (in X) are feminists before feminism, royal ladies who are slaves to their passion - these women are given a voice by Ovid in poetry which is at once simple and sophisticated, heartfelt and yet also full of irony and literary resonance.