Selections from Ovid Heroides: An Edition for Intermediate Students

This is the first intermediate-student edition of a selection from Ovid’s Heroides. Heroides VI, lines 1-100 and 127-64, and Heroides X, lines 1-76 and 119-50 are included as Latin text with an accompanying commentary and vocabulary. Focusing on a deliberately limited number of poems, this edition is designed to be manageable for students reading the text for the first time while also perfectly encapsulating the interest of Ovid’s other work and inspiring further study of it. A detailed introduction explains points of historical and stylistic interest, encompassing the full text of both poems, including sections omitted here from the Latin, and also Heroides IV.

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.