Ovid's "Heroides" and the Augustan Principate 9780299337803, 0299337804

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Ovid’s Heroides and the Augustan Principate

Ovid’s Heroides and the Augustan Principate

M e g a n O. D r i n k wat e r

The University of Wisconsin Press / Wisconsin Studies in Classics

Publication of this volume has been made possible, in part, through the generous support and enduring vision of Warren G. Moon. The University of Wisconsin Press 728 State Street, Suite 443 Madison, Wisconsin 53706 uwpress.wisc.edu Gray’s Inn House, 127 Clerkenwell Road London EC1R 5DB, United Kingdom eurospanbookstore.com Copyright © 2022 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System All rights reserved. Except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any format or by any means— digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise— or conveyed via the Internet or a website without written permission of the University of Wisconsin Press. Rights inquiries should be directed to [email protected]. Printed in the United States of America This book may be available in a digital edition. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Ottone, Megan Drinkwater, 1972– author. Title: Ovid’s Heroides and the Augustan principate / Megan O. Drinkwater. Description: Madison, Wisconsin : The University of Wisconsin Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021047930 | ISBN 9780299337803 (hardcover) Subjects: LCSH: Ovid, 43 B.C.–17 A.D. or 18 A.D. Heroides. | Ovid, 43 B.C.–17 A.D. or 18 A.D.—Political and social views. | Epistolary poetry, Latin—History and criticism. Classification: LCC PA6519.H7 O88 2022 | DDC 871/.01—dc23/eng/20220124 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021047930

In fond memory of L aw rence R i cha rd s on Jr. who first asked me, “Who is the puella?” and Sally M acEw en who taught me what it is to be a teacher.

Contents

Acknowledgments ix Introduction: The Heroides in Context

3

1 Narrative Interrupted: Heroides 7

13



2 Viscera nostra: Heroides 1

40



3 Real Poetry: Imaginary and Symbolic Dissonance in Heroides 3

62



4 Interlude: Time, Place, and Exile in Heroides 5

82



5 Critical Reading in Heroides 16 and 17

97

Coda: Hindsight and the Double Heroides 114 Notes 125 Works Cited 157 Index Locorom 167 Index 173

vii

Acknowledgments

To risk activating a tired trope, I will say that this book has had an extraordinarily long gestation period. It has thus benefited from the kindness and acumen of many. Those whose support I would like to acknowledge are legion, and I note but some of them here. Encouragement from Erika Zimmermann Damer, Bart Natoli, Hunter Gardner, Sharon James, Micaela Janan, Paul Allen Miller, Allison Sharrock, Thea Thorsen, and Jessica Westerhold helped keep a gentle breeze in my sails. Anonymous readers have strengthened both the framework of my study and the argumentation within it. Gregson Davis, the most formative and influential of my teachers, has been a mentor and example beyond price. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Laurel Fulkerson, a steadfast friend of two decades, made this work possible through consistent nudging and plenty of wry humor; if you need a friend in your corner, you can do no better. My home institution of Agnes Scott College provided support both material and collegial, and there are many to thank. The college itself provided two yearlong sabbaticals and a semester of pretenure leave, all of which contributed to various stages of thinking and writing. Especially at small liberal arts colleges, this kind of support is essential to enabling a thoughtful and sustained research agenda, and I am grateful for its continued existence. Katherine Smith and Jim Wiseman have sustained me in many ways through minicrises both personal and professional. Mary Cain, Misty Dumas-Patterson, and Regine Jackson were ideal partners in faculty governance as this project came to a close. Scarlett Kingsley, who vigilantly protected my time during a sabbatical leave in 2018–19 so that I could finally finish the book, has proved a godsend and the best departmental colleague ix

x

Acknowledgments

I could have hoped for. The wise and wonderful staff of McCain Library, with special recognition to Liz Bagley, Stephany Kurth, and Casey Long, have spirited far-flung articles into my inbox with incredible speed and goodwill. I also acknowledge Anne Beidler, Carlee Bishop, Harini Chandramouli, Christine Cozzens, Gundolf Graml, Doug Falen, Julia Knowlton, Tracey Laird, Rafael Ocasio, Philip Ojo, John Pilger, Li Qi, Scott Randazza, Rachel Rossetti, Nell Ruby, David Thompson, Lauran Whitworth, and Lee Zak, all of whom may or may not remember why. Former students at Duke University, Davidson College, and Agnes Scott have been enormously influential, both in keeping my motivation afloat and in changing how I see the ancient world. Particular mention is owed to Anthony Stromoski, Erika Weiberg, Abigail Breuker, Sophia Elzie, Jessica Jones, Vic Kennedy, Lydia Mathis, Nhut Nguyen, Indiana Ravenhill, Molly Saunders, Kate Schuhlein, and Lyric Simms. To the best undergraduate student assistant in the history of student assistants: Alex Jester, thank you for reading and commenting on an early draft of this work; its intelligibility is in large part because of you. A class on the transition from republic to empire in fall 2009 was truly the lever that shifted my approach from purely literary to sociohistorical: every one of you made a difference. Closest to my heart, my family: they have patiently followed the progress of this book, whether in the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, or Germany, and seemed never to have doubted its eventual completion. And finally, love and gratitude to Gabriele and Nicola, my constant companions who make work worthwhile, for their patience and support and for always— no matter what—giving me reasons to laugh. Final appreciations are due to Classical World and Classical Philology for their permission to reuse my previously published work that has become portions of chapters 4 and 5, respectively.

Ovid’s Heroides and the Augustan Principate

Introduction The Heroides in Context

T

h i s b o ok takes a new approach to Ovid’s Heroides, investigating how the author’s abandoned heroines reflect their time of composition, the turbulent transition from Rome as a republic to Rome as an empire. When Publius Ovidius Naso was born in 43 BCE, the year after Julius Caesar’s assassination, Rome was in transition from one civil war to another, with the triumvirate of Antony, Lepidus, and Octavian newly formed and vigorously seeking revenge. Despite fitful attempts to arrive at a stable compromise on republican principles, Rome would never be the same again.1 Proscriptions and land confiscations coincided with the poet’s first years along with the Perusine War; political unrest and uncertainty continued throughout the 30s.2 Not until Ovid was nearing manhood by Roman standards in 31 BCE did the decisive battle between Octavian and Antony take place at Actium. It would be another four years until the “first settlement” of 27 BCE proposed the transformation of Octavian to the prin­ ceps Augustus, and of Rome from republic to principate. Nor, as historians have long recognized, did the principate emerge fully formed from Augustus’ head.3 The gradual implementation of reformations or transformations of Rome’s republican institutions proceeded throughout the remainder of Ovid’s life, ending only with Augustus’ death in 14 CE, a mere three years before Ovid’s own. For these reasons, as Fergus Millar has put it, “if anyone is to qualify as Augustan through and through, it is Ovid, born in 43, whose writing starts in the 20s and extends into the early years of Tiberius.”4 Ovid’s life, that is, was entirely embedded in what may have been the period of greatest change in Rome’s long history. 3

4 Introduction

While these facts are well known to all scholars of the period—whether of its history or its literature—in the case of Ovid, their implications for his earliest works have not been fully explored or even duly recognized. The tendency to see Ovid as fully “Augustan”5 because he was not born until the triumviral period has obscured the impact of coming of age during a time of great instability for Rome, not merely in the short term, but after decades of civil wars. To name only the most obvious conflicts that involved fighting on the Italian peninsula itself, first the Social War, then Marius and Sulla, then Caesar and Pompey, and finally Octavian’s own march on Rome and the Perusine War were the backdrop for the lives of Ovid and the two generations preceding him. The triumvirate that followed would have lasting aftereffects that are expressed in the literature of the period and scholars are increasingly recognizing the need to “extend some of the associations of the term ‘Triumviral’ beyond the early 20s.”6 If those associations extend as late as 16, as Farrell and Nelis have suggested, then they certainly overlap with the earliest of Ovid’s literary explorations. Yet Ovid continues to be labeled as firmly Augustan, as if the concerns with civil strife and the transition from republic to principate so evident in triumviral literature were simply no longer concerns that would express themselves in the poetry of Ovid. That such strife would not have had a significant impact on Ovid’s own generation seems profoundly unlikely. It is similar to imagining that the Vietnam War and Watergate trials were unimportant in the world view of Americans like myself born as they unfolded, or that today’s college students and recent graduates were unaffected by the events of 9/11 and their continuing aftermath; similar, yet for Ovid’s generation much more enduring, imme­ diate, and dramatic. Proscriptions and land confiscations did not result for the American populace; entire towns were not handed over to the army; veteran colonies were not formed in our proverbial backyards; our government did not centralize into the hands of one individual for the next forty years.7 All of these are the case for Rome during the transition from republic to empire, and yet scholars tend to see responses to this change only in Ovid’s later works and certainly not in his Heroides. In this study I show what addressing this oversight might yield in terms of understanding the effect of Rome’s dramatic changes on its intellectual citizen elite. In doing so I suggest a potential corrective to a scholarly trend that downplays Ovid’s

Introduction

5

historical context and further propose that his Heroides collection may help illuminate this context for us. Ovid’s response to his milieu—at least in relation to his later works— has long been a vexed question, with scholars debating the poet’s pro- or anti-Augustan stance and even whether a clear definition of such a stance is possible, much less identifiable.8 Studies of Ovid’s politics, in any case, tend to focus everywhere but on his Heroides,9 which is in many ways understandable: the first person speaker is not identifiable with the poet but is instead separated from him by gender; the speaking characters are well known from myth and thus comment on literary tradition, not current events; the works are some of the poet’s earliest and hence cannot show a developed response to the “Augustan” regime.10 On the other hand, the marked anachronism of transplanting these heroines, and in the case of the double letters, heroes as well, into elegy—a genre with an intense and very brief floruit11—rather begs the question of what precisely these characters are doing in this very Roman literary context in the first century BCE.12 My response to this puzzle is that Ovid’s translation of figures from the serious genres of epic and tragedy into the frivolous one of elegy, and his shift from a masculine to feminine perspective, comments on the translation of Roman citizens from significant members of their fatherland into subjects whose voice holds little weight in social and political discourse. In this I am especially influenced by Patricia Rosenmeyer’s observation that in the Heroides “Ovid identifies with his heroines and uses their gendered, foreign voices to enunciate views and feelings he would be at a loss to express in his own, male, Roman voice.”13 My approach aims to access this voice and take seriously its expressions of loss as symptomatic of the disenfranchisement of Rome’s citizenry in the first decades of Augustus’ consolidation of power. To provide a more holistic reading, moreover, I examine not only the single letters but also the first pair of double letters, themselves composed either in the exile period or near it,14 with a concluding investigation of the closing double-letter pair. I also refer frequently to the exile poetry where it corroborates concerns latent in the single letters that provide evidence for a sustained engagement with the changing political milieu throughout Ovid’s corpus.15 In this I again follow Rosenmeyer, who notes that “Ovid and his heroines suffer banishment at the hands of a powerful

6 Introduction

persecutor and abandonment by their former allies; they see themselves as fractured, wounded creatures separated from their proper environments; they are forced to beg for a return to their previous position, namely the status of a stable relationship (with a lover or Augustus) or a secure home.”16 Read in light of this similarity between their real and imagined authors, the single Heroides bear witness to a sense of the disquiet that accompanied the dawn of the principate and emerge as a kind of vatic textual corpus that predicts the costs of the Augustan program. The double letters in turn validate that disquiet with the important perspective of hindsight, showing that the concerns I here argue are latent in the single letters have in fact come to fruition. Throughout the history of Rome’s republic, participation in the res publica was the most significant factor in Roman citizen identity.17 Running for and holding office; proposing, vocally supporting or opposing, and executing laws; hearing and arbitrating petitions from foreign leaders; executing mili­ tary obligations; and receiving accolades and triumphs for one’s successes— all of these activities were central to romanitas and, more specifically, to the Roman conception of masculine virtue, virtus.18 The effect of Augustus’ nascent regime on Rome’s citizen elite, of which Ovid was a member, however, was the erosion of the importance of all these activities. As Trevor Fear has argued, “The internal stability provided by the Pax Augusta was at the price both of the ability of the senatorial elite to participate as effectively as it was used to in politics and also of the republican constitution itself.”19 Opportunities to achieve excellence and to govern were drastically curtailed as Augustus’ evolving program continued the process Kristina Milnor has identified as “transforming what it meant to participate in the functioning of the Roman state.”20 The disempowerment that accompanied that transformation, I propose, is part of what Ovid explores in his Heroides collection of letters from abandoned heroines—all women of status in a reduced state—to the powerful male figures who dominate their lives and present, in their reduced circumstances, their only opportunity for a clear and stable identity.21 The way Ovid refashions his source texts often focuses on political or personal loss, public degradation, failures of self-identification, an inability to speak freely, and a pointed questioning of narrative authority. These

Introduction

7

themes provide compelling parallels to the changing role of the citizen at the end of Rome’s republic and to the utter exhaustion of a populace worn down by decades of civil conflict.22 The letters I examine in this study explore Rome’s foundation myth as represented in the Aeneid (letter 7 from Dido to Aeneas) and Ovid’s refashioning of characters from Homer (letter 1, Penelope to Ulysses; letter 3, Briseis to Achilles; and letters 5, 16, and 17 by Oenone, Paris, and Helen)23 as those that are especially concerned with war and its consequences and thus provide a rich field of inquiry for the letters’ responses to Ovid’s own sociohistorical setting. The core of my study is structured to move from the wake of the Trojan War (letters 7 and 1) to its central action (letter 3) and finally its causes (letters 5 and 16–17) in order to illustrate how Ovid’s fictional letters react to his milieu’s most pervasive and influential literary-cultural documents. Allegorical readings of Augustan poetry that identify “the device of commenting on recent events by citing the more distant past” are broadly accepted for the poetry of Ovid’s older contemporaries and for Ovid’s own later works.24 Here I propose such readings of even Ovid’s earliest and most “fictitious” works. The passage of time between the composition of the single letters, in the second or first decade BCE, and that of the double letters, perhaps as late as the exile period,25 is also significant for my understanding of them. In the subset of the Heroides I examine in this study, Ovid has traced the chronology of the Trojan war inverse to their ordering in the collection. His collection begins with Penelope, ten years after the completion of the war, continues to Briseis’ letter 3 during the action of the war itself, then moves on in letter 5 to Oenone before the war has begun but after Paris has sailed for Sparta. Ovid then concludes his Trojan cycle with Paris’ seduction of Helen in the first letter pair, epistles 16 and 17. In his meditation on the myth of greatest importance to Rome’s cultural history, Ovid begins, that is, with the greatest perspective of hindsight, moving backward to the beginning of the conflict while he himself is moving forward in line with the development of the Augustan principate. Given his eventual arrival at the first set of double letters’ cautionary tale of Paris and Helen, it seems that the development of the new regime has inspired deeper introspection into the meaning of the political changes around him, leading to an increasingly pointed response to both the ability and duty to read critically.

8 Introduction

Scholarship Latin elegy has long been the locus of innovative and illuminating research. Investigations of the poet-speaker’s feminized stance in elegy—of which the Heroides are a subset—are a jumping off point for my approach and indeed for my understanding of the genre as a whole. On Ovid’s older contem­ poraries, the work of Ellen Greene and Paul Allen Miller on Propertius has been especially formative for my thinking about the elegiac speaker’s gender fluidity, while my own previous work on Tibullus’ homoerotic cycle helped me to think through the gender affiliations of the erotic speaker.26 The groundwork laid by Marilyn Skinner in her study of Catullus, however, has been truly fundamental for its elucidation of the ways in which the Catullan speaker adopts a female persona as a form of escape from the rigid framework of Roman masculinity and for its reminder that “mythic heroines often serve as fictive illustrations of the state of his own mind.”27 I have taken these aspects of Skinner’s work as an invitation in what follows. The specific impetus for my approach to the Heroides as providing access to the experience of Rome’s elite under Augustus is Maria Wyke’s recognition of elegy as arising from a “crisis of masculinity evident in the period of transition from republic to principate,”28 the precise historical context of the collection’s composition. Viewed from this perspective, the Heroides become an enticing locus in which to explore this “crisis of masculinity”: what better way to write out this crisis of masculine identity than by creating a female persona rather than simply a feminized male speaker? It has also long been argued that the poet-speaker in the elegies of Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid cannot simply be taken as a mouthpiece for the flesh-and-blood poet.29 If the speaker in elegy is not simply a stand-in for the poet and yet comments on contemporary events, cannot Ovid’s heroines, by extension, do the same? Instead of the pseudorustic eques who would rather retreat to the country than fight for the patria (Tibullus), or the urbane man about town out of step with the Augustan moral program (Propertius and Ovid), the imagined writers of these elegiac letters may perhaps be enacting the disempowerment experienced by (male) citizens at a time of tremendous change in Rome’s political system.30 In other words, perhaps the mythological status of Ovid’s heroines provides a convenient mask from behind which inconvenient truths may be safely uttered:31 the

Introduction

9

poet can always deny, quite plausibly, that there is anything subversive in these mythical puellae. On the Heroides in particular, scholars have illuminated the letters’ intertextual sophistication, tracing Ovid’s interaction with his source texts, whether on the small scale of individual letters or a broader examination of the collection as a whole.32 The significance of this intertextual approach cannot be overstated, as one hallmark of elegy is the elegists’ profound engagement with the previous literature, from Homer to Callimachus to Virgil. My study, however, moves beyond this initial step of understanding Ovid’s poetic practice by investigating the wider political—as opposed to literary—significance of reusing texts so integral to Roman literary and cultural self-fashioning. Excellent feminist work on the Heroides has also influenced my understanding of the implications of Ovid’s exploitation of female perspective. These studies provide glimpses of Ovid’s imagined authors as failing to present themselves to their best advantage,33 as resisting readers of their own stories,34 or as a community of writers who may or may not choose to learn from each other.35 Even now, however, there has been very little attempt to consider the Heroides as providing commentary on Augustan practice.36 My study thus asks very different questions toward a very different end. Ovid’s heroines, as I will show in this study through a variety of critical approaches, provide access to the anxieties accompanying the cultural shifts of the nascent empire. This study thus combines these four areas—elegy as an expression of the crisis of citizen identity at Rome, Ovid’s intertextual discourse, the significance of the feminized perspective Ovid provides, and the political import of these letters in reflecting contemporary disenfranchisement— in the first examination of the Heroides to address how Ovid’s seemingly innocuous mythological revisions get at the heart of the Roman experience at a time of extreme and permanent political change. It does so in full recognition that I am proposing readings of texts that are notoriously hard to pin down, composed in a period in which the totalizing nature of the Augustan discourse makes the identification of subversion or support nearly impossible.37 It is partly for this reason that I do not claim that the concerns I see arising from or embedded in the texts I discuss are consciously articulated by Ovid; they may well be, but what Elena Giusti calls

10 Introduction

the “‘doublethink’ of the literary and ideological system” in which Ovid writes makes it impossible to know.38 Structure and Approach While my field of inquiry is fairly tightly defined, encompassing heroines (and one hero) Ovid takes from the Homeric cycle and by extension from Virgil, the approach I take is purposefully varied. In this, I take up the invitation of Ovid’s composite authorship of the letters by providing a composite reading of the letters I discuss. This kind of reading is not only justified but is indeed invited by Ovid’s overt employment of a composite mode of authorship:39 in his Heroides he appropriates fictive female personae despite his own undeniable status as the real author behind the texts. In correspondence with this composite authorship, each chapter constitutes a case study in one of Ovid’s Heroides, with the overall aim of illustrating how different approaches applied to these letters all tend to the same conclusion: that the Heroides are not divorced from their context of composition but instead help to elucidate that context for their readers. What I aim to show is that the Heroides should not be dismissed as flights of fancy40 or mere rhetorical set pieces41 but instead can contribute to our understanding of how Ovid engages with politics throughout his entire career. As the chapters progress from “later” in the literary tradition to “earlier” (i.e., Dido to Aeneas postwar, to Paris and Helen prewar), I am also moving from general to specific reflections of, or responses to, the early principate, beginning with a general critique of the Roman project and concluding with a potential, veiled, specific critique of Augustus himself. Chapter 1 examines how Ovid’s letter 7 from Dido to Aeneas questions Virgil’s canonical narrative in ways that interrupt its overall positive depiction of Rome’s ancestor. The chapter first investigates Ovid’s development of elements in Virgil that present Dido in a more positive light than Aeneas, then reads the spousal ghosts Dido’s letter activates as encouraging readers to question the authority of Virgil’s account, both of the ghosts themselves and of the Aeneid’s narrative as a whole.42 Chapter 2 turns to Ovid’s Homeric sources and Penelope’s letter to Ulysses, examining Ovid’s exile poetry as it alludes to Heroides 1 and how Penelope’s letter itself alludes to contem­ porary poetry in ways that encourage a political reading of the letter. This reading shows that Ovid’s Penelope is not anchored solely in the Odyssey

Introduction

11

but also in the Roman post-civil-war literary context. Her letter, too, thus contributes to a critique of Ovid’s Augustan milieu, encouraging readers to consider her situation as analogous to those of Ovid’s own time, when the populace awaits a return to normalcy after decades of war and disruption. From these traditional philological beginnings, chapter 3 moves into more theoretical territory, using Briseis’ letter to Achilles as a case study of shaken identity following Micaela Janan43 and Allen Miller’s44 psychoanalytical readings of elegy. This chapter argues that Ovid’s heroine resists and comments on the Augustan system, proposing that Ovid’s refashioning of the Iliad’s Briseis as an elegiac slave of love presents a powerful parallel to Romans’ reduced liberty under Augustus. The fourth chapter is the turning point in this study, making the tran­ sition from the single to double letters by examining Oenone’s letter as an exercise in “ironic prefiguration”45 of Ovid’s own exile in combining disparate but complementary theoretical approaches to elegy in general and the Heroides in particular. It takes inspiration from three feminist readings,46 discussing the letter not in the shadow of the literary tradition—which for Oenone is quite sparse—but in the shadow of Ovid’s subsequent personal history. Taking Oenone’s unusual lack of prophetic foresight in this letter as playing with Ovid’s (lacking) and our (abundant) knowledge of how his life will unfold, I examine the letter’s focus on rejection, isolation, exile, entrapment, and powerlessness. In the following chapter I consider what emerges when we read the first of the double-letter pairs against the Ars Amatoria, the poem that ostensibly led to the poet’s exile, showing Helen to be a much more astute reader of Ovid’s lovers’ manual than Paris and a rightfully “resisting reader” of his own letter to her.47 I argue—following especially the approach of Duncan Kennedy to expose Paris as a poor enactor of the elegiac script48—that Helen’s keen-eyed and synthetic reading makes her a model for external readers of the poems, and that Ovid’s presentation of her is a hint to us to read more like Helen in our critical assessment of the Heroides. More importantly, though, I aim to show how “reading more” into the first double-letter pair opens up the possibility that Paris in his ineptitude and overconfidence may serve as a latent foil to Octavian and his confidence in his plans for Rome, while Helen’s response may similarly echo Rome’s ambivalence to and concerns about the consequences of his overtures.49 Given that contemporary readers of the double letters, as well as

12 Introduction

those who read them today, know the outcome of the civil wars and resultant costs and benefits of the principate, Helen’s warnings carry additional weight in terms of how Ovid and his contemporaries may have felt about the balance sheet they have been left with by the time the Augustan principate is truly established. Reading the letters with this kind of hindsight adds depth to the Heroides’ potential for cultural commentary and additional support for the consistency of Ovid’s engagement with political concerns throughout his career. I conclude with a brief chapter on the final double-letter pair, that between Acontius and Cydippe, to give a clearer sense of where reading more like Helen might take us. Looking at the entire collection in hindsight, and especially taking into account the warnings Helen sees in Paris’ uncomfortable exempla of women taken by guests, permits us to see more in the capstone double letters as well. What we see, I suggest, is a continued critique of Octavian’s rise to power, reframing Rome’s allegiance to its new leader as surrender rather than consent, and at considerable cost. It should be clear from this overview that this book is not an exhaustive study of Ovid’s Heroides, nor even of the few letters on which I concentrate. Instead, I am asking new questions of the letters and proposing a new way of reading them. I hope that in consequence my approach will encourage a sharpening of scholarly focus on the ability of even Ovid’s Heroides, for all their seemingly innocuous poetic play, to illuminate their context of composition and thus enrich our understanding of Roman social history.

chapte r 1

Narrative Interrupted Heroides 7 If a writer gives voice, consciously or not, to ideology, a writer can also set out consciously to change ideology by giving it such a voice even while making it subtly different. —Toll (1991), 5–6

T

h i s chap t er, and h ence this b o ok , opens with defeat and failure. Heroides 7 has been so assessed both by critical condemnation and by silence.1 Howard Jacobson’s influential assessment of the poem set the tone for a negative response by modern scholars some fifty years ago,2 and critics of the Heroides have rarely moved out of the shadow left by his condemnation. Even so, the few and generally unfavorable assessments of the poem hint at fruitful lines of inquiry yet to be explored, especially in terms of the larger approach of my study: examining how Ovid’s Heroides fit into and comment on the historical context in which they were composed. An important aspect of Jacobson’s assessment, for example, has largely passed from view in scholarship on the Heroides, namely the behind-the-scenes role of Ovid as author as opposed to Dido as speaking subject.3 Jacobson’s negative view of the poem is thus an important starting point for a study that returns the focus to the auctor Ovid behind the actor (or scriptor) Dido, and indeed the other heroines as well.4 Such a shift in focus provides a new perspective not only on what Ovid’s Dido has to say and how it differs from Virgil’s account but also on what those differences might mean from the pen of a literary and social critic like Ovid at the end of the Roman republic. Marilynn Desmond has correctly recognized Ovid as “a perceptive and skeptical reader,”5 and his skepticism is on display nowhere more clearly than in the Heroides. I thus take my lead from Desmond, but my approach differs from hers in that she is interested 13

14

Narrative Interrupted

primarily in how Ovid constructs Dido as a female reader with limited or circumscribed knowledge. I am instead interested in how he constructs Dido as a reader resistant to the overall message of the Aeneid, both in terms of what has come before her imagined letter and what will come after it. Where Desmond sees a Dido who “cannot comprehend the historical significance of the narrative she has heard,”6 I see her status as fati nescia (Aen. 1.299)7 as largely irrelevant, focusing instead on how Ovid’s knowledge of the Aeneid, much like ours, permits us a wider understanding of how Dido’s letter disrupts the largely pro-Roman tale. Indeed, Desmond also suggests this line of investigation, noting that Dido’s “questioning of imperial values represented by Vergil’s text actually illustrates many of the problems of meaning, interpretation, and understanding shared by the characters and readers of Vergil’s Aeneid. When Dido reads Vergil she encounters a problematic representation of epic deeds and values . . . [that] ultimately tend to emphasize rather than resolve the difficult issues of causality and meaning in Vergil’s narrative.”8 As I hope to establish in this opening chapter, Ovid’s skepticism toward Virgil’s account and the corrections he proposes in his letter from Dido to Aeneas are part of a wider scheme that provides a similarly skeptical reading of Augustan cultural propaganda throughout the Heroides. Before undertaking such an analysis, however, it is important to consider carefully what Ovid’s Dido tells us is the goal of her letter, as it is funda­ mental to my belief that scholars have not yet asked a number of important questions about the poem. Dido’s assertion that she does not hope to persuade Aeneas (nec quia te nostra spererem te prece moveri, 3) aligns with Barchiesi’s view of how the Heroides interact with their source texts: the letters provide a different perspective on them but do not expect a changed outcome.9 Yet the new perspective Ovid’s letter from Dido to Aeneas provides raises disturbing questions about the legitimacy of the Aeneid’s canonical account.10 That the account here questioned is the Aeneid, the text that embodies Augustan mythology about Rome’s foundation and its mission, is significant and indeed important. As Peter Knox observes, “By refuting the arguments adduced by Virgil’s Aeneas to justify his actions, O. poses a fundamental challenge to the heroic values of the Aeneid.”11 Ovid’s focus, then, is not on “building a good rhetorical case for Dido,” as Jacobson asserts,12 but



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rather changing the way the reader views this famous episode and calling into question the reliability of the Aeneid’s reporting. In this letter, “Vergilian tragedy” is thus not “completely lost,”13 as Jacobson would have it, but rather reframed and re-presented as a different tragedy altogether: not that of Aeneas’ abandonment of Dido in pursuit of his mission to found Rome but of the implications—already present in Virgil, as I shall argue below—of the earlier author’s whitewashing of Rome’s foundational myth. My approach, then, presents its own alternative perspective on contemporary responses to Rome’s literary culture. Nancy Shumate has argued that Horace’s Roman Odes contribute to the Augustan message of national unity through their emphasis on virtues prevalent in the rhetoric of nationalism as identified for later periods.14 Drawing from a study of Virgil’s Aeneid by Katharine Toll that reads the epic as contributing to the “enterprise of making Roman-ness,”15 Shumate emphasizes the role of writers in perpetuating narratives of national identity,16 as does Toll herself. Taking a path that Toll herself obliquely suggests in the epigraph to this chapter, I here examine how Ovid’s representation of Dido in Heroides 7, unlike Shumate’s assessment of the Roman Odes and Toll’s of the Aeneid, runs counter to the Augustan narra­ tive of national origins as embodied by Virgil’s epic. Heroides 7 articulates— or at least helps bring more to the fore—a concern already present in Virgil, namely, how the encounter between Dido and Aeneas, in the words of Andrew Feldherr, “subverts or counterbalances the ‘epic’ ambitions of the dominant narrative.”17 In addition to Desmond’s skeptical reading of Heroides 7, Paul Allen Miller’s study of the poem is of particular relevance to my reading of Dido’s letter. Miller’s important advance in approaches to the Heroides is primarily its recognition that, given the overtly intertextual nature of these poems, scholars should cease attempting to treat them as the utterings of a unified speaking subject.18 Instead, he focuses on how Ovid’s Dido’s allusions to, and indeed citations of, the Aeneid produce a “split perspective” that results in a tension best understood by means of Bakhtinian parody.19 According to this reading, the parodic text must recognize the authority of the text it parodies and yet refuse to recognize that authority as absolute.20 This is precisely what Heroides 7 does, and yet that failure to yield to Virgil’s version of events is not limited to the literary sphere but extends into the political realm

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through its questioning of Rome’s founding mythological narrative. Moreover, many of the points at which Ovid questions Virgil’s authority are already present as questions, or what Desmond calls “textual invitations,”21 in the Aeneid itself. Ralph Hexter, too, sees such invitations in what he labels the epic’s “paradigmatic puzzles”—of which Dido is perhaps the epic’s most famous.22 Ovid’s resolution of this puzzle by providing a voice to Dido that enacts this questioning process continues a trend already established, or at least encouraged, by Virgil. The split perspective Miller sees in Heroides 7, that is, is already present in Virgil: Ovid amplifies that perspective, and he does so in ways that question the overall positive thrust of the Aeneid’s narrative and interrupt the progress of Rome’s protonationalistic foundational poetic text.23 In what follows I investigate the chief ways Dido’s letter interrupts this narrative through questioning and undercutting some “factual” material in the Aeneid even while corroborating it, correcting it, or providing a different perspective on other such factual material and, perhaps most importantly, pointing out moments in the narrative when we as readers should question its authority. Thus I do not agree with scholars who see Dido’s letter as failing to recognize or understand Aeneas’ mission,24 or who feel that Heroides 7’s “version of events . . . is not reinforced by the normative values of the poem as a whole.”25 Instead, I read Ovid’s letter as engaging profoundly with the Aeneid’s “normative values” by revisiting points in the poem that offer a critique of those values already in Virgil and by amplifying them in a more overtly critical way. To illustrate my points I focus on three examples: how Ovid uses Dido’s letter to question Aeneas’ commitment to his mission even while confirming the Aeneid’s phrasing; how he uses it to counter the Aeneid’s Romanocentric focus, both through a new understanding of how Dido obtained her land at Carthage and on the Carthaginian view of (proto)Roman fides; and finally, how Ovid’s Dido invokes the Aeneid’s spousal ghosts (imagines) to question the epic’s authority, or at the very least, its objectivity. The instances of Dido’s engagement with the Aeneid, and especially of Aeneas’ telling of the fall of Troy are many and well explored,26 but largely in terms of Ovid’s intertextual references rather than what they might mean in Ovid’s own context. This close reading of Ovid’s Heroides 7 shows how his presentation of Dido’s perspective is more than literary gamesmanship: it in fact questions the tale of Aeneas’ mission to found Rome as it is presented in the Aeneid.



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Certus eundi From the start of her letter, Dido corroborates many of the facts we encounter in the Aeneid but at the same time raises worrying questions about their plausibility and implications.27 She affirms, for example, that Aeneas will leave her, as we know to be true, but questions the certainty of his departure. As she does so, she alludes pointedly to his uncertainty in the Aeneid, and indeed his lack of focus on the task at hand that requires divine intervention in book 4 of the Aeneid:28 certus es ire tamen miseramque relinquere Dido, atque idem venti vela fidemque ferent? Certus es, Aenea, cum foedere solvere naves, quaeque ubi sint nescis, Itala regna sequi? . . . Ut terram invenias, quis eam tibi tradet habendam? Quis sua non notis arva tenenda dabit? (Her. 7.7–10; 15–16) Are you certain to go, and to leave Dido miserable, and will the winds carry off your sails and your pledge at the same time? Are you certain, Aeneas, to loosen your ships together with your pact, to seek the Italian kingdoms when you don’t even know where they are? . . . Suppose that you do find land. Who will hand it over to you so that you may have it? Who will give his own fields to people he doesn’t know so that they may have them? While Dido notes that Aeneas is certain to go, certus es ire (7), she affirms his departure in the very words of the Aeneid, where the focus on the certainty of Aeneas’ departure, and indeed of Dido’s death, appears repeatedly.29 Yet her corroboration is not straightforward, as editors tend to see these statements as questions.30 Dido does not merely confirm that Aeneas will leave but instead asks whether this is really certain. Taken as questions, “Are you sure you are leaving?” (certus es ire . . .? 7) and “Are you sure you’ll seek the kingdoms of Italy” (certus es . . . Itala regna sequi? 9–10) allude to Aeneas’ own uncertainty about his mission in the Aeneid. In this way Ovid’s Dido undercuts the facts of the Aeneid even as she corroborates them, using the Aeneid’s own words against its hero.31

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When Dido confirms again that Aeneas is certain to proceed in accordance with the Aeneid’s narrative and certain to seek the Italian realms, she does so in the context of his clear ignorance of where he is headed. These Itala regna of line 9 are explained by a crucial relative clause—“and you don’t even know where they are!” (quaeque ubi sint nescis, 10)—which presents Aeneas as both headstrong and ignorant.32 Dido’s presentation of Aeneas’ goal, the Itala regna (10), is even more problematic, though, as she correctly questions his right to possession of these new territories, thus undermining the legitimacy of his project as the forefather of Rome. “When you do find this land,” she asks, “who will hand it over to you? Who will give his own fields to people he doesn’t even know so that they may have them?” (15– 16).33 Here, of course, Dido looks ahead to the massive conflict that follows Aeneas’ arrival in Italy,34 suggesting that this was the only logical outcome of his mission. Virgil’s repeated insistence that the mission is divinely authorized carries no weight from this outside perspective, as she pointedly indicates later in her letter in her wish the gods had instead forbidden him to arrive at Carthage (Her. 7.139).35 Dido’s engagement with the immediacy of Aeneas’ departure also echoes her words in the Aeneid but similarly modifies them slightly in ways that cast doubt on Aeneid’s perspective. The Ovidian Dido’s explanation in Heroides 7 of how the weather should influence Aeneas’ decision to depart picks up on her Virgilian counterpart’s words in the Aeneid once she discovers Aeneas’ imminent departure: Quin etiam hiberno moliris sidere classem et mediis properas Aquilonibus ire per altum, crudelis? Quid, si non arva aliena domosque ignotas peteres, et Troia antiqua maneret, Troia per undosum peteretur classibus aequor? (Aen. 4.309–13) Are you, cruel one, preparing your fleet even under the winter star and hurrying to cross the deeps in the midst of the north winds? Why, even if you weren’t seeking foreign shores and unknown homes, and ancient Troy still remained, would Troy be sought across a stormy sea with your fleets?



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Dido’s chief point is clear: the weather is now so bad that he would not even attempt to return to Troy in it.36 She specifies twice that the reason for the sea’s unfavorable condition is the time of year, as both hiberno . . . sidere (309) and mediis . . . Aquilonibus (310) indicate: it is winter and thus the seas are unsafe. Ovid’s Dido has a similar sentiment supported by similar logic but goes further in that she proposes an alternative plan—waiting for better weather—and adds a specific allusion to Aeneas’ stubbornness using Virgil’s own terminology: Quo fugis? Obstat hiemps: hiemis mihi gratia prosit. Aspice ut eversas concitet Eurus aquas. Quod tibi malueram, sine me debere procellis: Iustior est animo ventus et unda tuo . . . . . . Iam venti ponent, strataque aequaliter unda caeruleis Triton per mare curret equis. Tu quoque cum ventis utinam mutabilis esses! Et, nisi duritia robora vincis, eris. (Her. 7.41–52) Where do you flee? Winter stands in the way; may the grace of winter be a help to me. Look how the east wind stirs up the overturned waters. What I wished for you came to pass in storms without my aid: the wind and waves are fairer to me than your spirit. . . . Soon the winds will fall, and Triton will run across evenly smoothed waves with his sea-green horses through the sea. You, too, would that you were changeable like the winds! And you will be, unless you conquer even oak with your stubbornness. Ovid’s Dido chooses a more ambiguous word for winter—hiemps (41)—but deploys it twice as if emphasizing that she agrees with Virgil’s Dido but expands the potential reasons for stormy weather to include both winter and storms more generally. She further specifies not only north winds standing for winter but also adds a wind from the east (Eurus, 42), providing a crosswind from the northeast that would blow Aeneas right back toward Carthage. Indeed, she notes, the winds are more thoughtful than

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Aeneas himself, as they grant her wish without her even asking it, while Aeneas seems set to depart no matter what. Once she has gently modified Virgil’s Dido’s speech to include storms more generally (hiemps, 41, and procellis, 43) and an unfavorable headwind, Ovid’s Dido provides an alternative that points us back both to the Aeneid and to the inevitability that Aeneas will not heed her pleas. Her suggestion that Triton will soon calm the waves, and her reminder soon to follow that Aeneas knows Triton’s destructive power (54),37 introduces a compromise, even if she will only articulate it more than one hundred lines later. Aeneas should delay his departure for better, more predictable, weather, temporibus certis . . . cum dabit aura viam (170–71), and in so doing give her time to consider38 and for him to leave more certain of success (tempus ut observem, manda mihi: certior ibis, 173).39 In this, of course, she responds again to the Aeneid in Dido’s charge to her sister Anna—after a similarly distant interlude—that she seek from Aeneas a promise to await more favorable con­ditions (expectet facilemque fugam ventosque ferentis, Aen. 4.430) and give her time to adapt to his departure (tempus inane . . . requiem spatiumque furori, Aen. 4.433). Dido’s specification in Heroides 7 that an east wind will prevent Aeneas’ safe departure also draws on another point in the Aeneid: Mercury’s prodding of Aeneas in the interlude between Dido’s plotting and Aeneas’ departure. Mercury insists the winds are favorably from the west (nec Zephyros audis spirare secundos? Aen. 4.562) in his attempt to bring about a prompt departure.40 Here, instead of providing greater spe­cificity, Ovid bluntly contradicts Virgil’s Mercury, reminding readers that the perspectives of Dido and Aeneas, of Carthage and Rome, may be polar opposites even when they are ostensibly faced with the same data.41 In this contradiction, Ovid reframes the Aeneid’s narrative in a way that questions the authority of Virgil’s account, hinting to readers that he as author may not swallow the Virgilian tale whole. It is also in this brief speech by Mercury that we find the famous condem­ nation of womankind as variable and fickle (varium et mutabile semper / femina, Aen. 4.569–70), to which Ovid’s Dido also responds in her wish that Aeneas himself would be more flexible (mutabilis, Her. 7.51) in his conviction that he must depart. Ovid’s Dido does more than transfer the epithet from herself and all womankind to Aeneas. Her focus on the hero’s stubbornness, her insistence that he will change his mind unless it is stronger



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even than a tree trunk in his constancy (nisi duritia robora vincis, Her. 7.52), both confirms and recasts Virgil’s famous simile of Aeneas as an oak tree with a solid trunk (velut annoso validam cum robore quercum, Aen. 4.441).42 There, Aeneas is in precisely the same situation Ovid’s letter posits for him, should he read it: the determined hero buffeted by the laments of the Carthaginian queen. Readers of letter 7 know that Aeneas will not prove muta­ bilis, that he will stand firm like Virgil’s deep-rooted oak tree.43 And yet where Virgil’s simile depicts Aeneas’ steadfastness as a natural phenomenon, an oak rightly resisting fierce winds (Aen. 4.442) by stretching both up to the sky (Aen. 4.445) and down to Tartarus (Aen. 4.446), Dido subtly emphasizes that Aeneas’ response to her pleas is unnatural. His determination to stand firm is not framed as a literary comparison but posited instead as a natural impossibility: a person cannot be firmer or stronger than a great tree. To do so is a mark of unwise stubbornness, as her next words on the foolhardiness of a departure in winter make clear. Here Ovid’s Dido redeploys Aeneas’ famed constancy—unmoving as a great oak—as simple stubbornness (duri­ tia, Her. 7.52) and an unwillingness to be flexible (mutabilis, Her. 7.51) in the face of the elements. This refashioning of a positive, if fraught, depiction in Virgil into a negative one, using the very same terminology, points our attention again to how widely Dido’s view of Aeneas’ divinely sponsored mission diverges from the image Virgil paints in Rome’s foundation narrative and again reminds us of the interplay between changeability and constancy that plagues Aeneas throughout Aeneid 4.44 Thus while Ovid’s Dido reuses language from the Aeneid in her description of Aeneas’ relationship to his mission to arrive in Italy, at the same time she first questions his commitment to that mission and then refashions that commitment as against the laws of nature. Troiana fides Another element of what I would term subversive corroboration surfaces through Dido’s perspective as the founder of Carthage. In Ovid’s description of Dido’s acquisition of the land that would become the new city, he does not simply confirm the Aeneid’s version of the story but instead chooses to validate one of two versions the Aeneid presents. The one he privileges, interestingly, does not come from Venus genetrix of the Roman race but

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from the Gaetulian Iarbas. Ovid’s preference for the “foreign” version of the tale destabilizes the overall Roman thrust of the narrative, validating instead an alternative perspective, that of Rome’s enemies. As John Starks notes, whereas most ancient authors cite the land deal at Aeneid 1.365–70 as proof of Dido’s “trickery and deception,”45 Virgil is careful to embed it in a context sympathetic to Dido—namely the growth of the city of Carthage—and to present the deal itself in the most neutral of terms. Venus, moreover, is the speaker when we first learn of the deal in book 1. She reports only that Dido and her fellow refugees purchased some unspecified land mercatique solum (1.367) and that the land took its name from the bull hide used to demarcate it. Iarbas’ later and more specific assessment of Dido’s purchase in book 4 as a piece of shore for cultivating, a litus arandum (4.212), is the option selected and confirmed by Ovid’s Dido: it was not a generic piece of soil in Heroides 7 but quite specifically a litus (118). While this may present a Dido who glosses over what some see as a kind of theft,46 Virgil had in fact provided this alternate reading—in the mouth of an African foreigner, and one who thinks of Aeneas as no better than a Paris with an effeminate band of comrades (ille Paris cum semiviro comitatu, 4.215). Yet, even there Virgil does not put a negative view of Dido where we might most expect it, in the mouth of her jilted suitor.47 Instead, Iarbas makes clear that Dido paid for the land she got: she obtained the site of her urbem / exiguam for a price, pretio (4.212–13). Ovid’s Dido confirms this transaction too: she bought her piece of shore—litus emo (118).48 This is the version of events Ovid chooses to confirm, and it is one that privileges the dissenting, foreign, hostile voice over the version voiced by Venus herself. Dido’s insistence in Heroides 7 that it is Aeneas’ lies and deceit that will do her in also decentralizes the Aeneid’s overall positive focus on Rome’s ancestor. Again Ovid follows Virgil’s lead, affirming the queen’s assessment of Trojan faithlessness in the Aeneid, using the very same word—periuria (67)—despite the word’s rarity in poetry.49 Ovid thus confirms occasional negative—if biased—views of Rome’s founding race already present in Virgil, while focusing the accusation most sharply on the specific ancestor of Rome. While Virgil’s readers are well versed in the infamous punica fides maligned by Roman authors, in Heroides 7 it is Trojan deceit (67–68) that has undone Dido.50 Ovid thus assimilates and redeploys the notion of faithless Carthaginians, here moving the burden of the charge from Dido as the



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representative of Carthage to Aeneas as the representative of Rome’s future.51 And indeed, Ovid may again be expanding on a broader program already present in Virgil. As Starks also notes, Virgil is careful not to attach the usual prejudicial notions of punica fides to the queen of Carthage.52 Ovid follows Virgil’s lead in continuing his reversal of character attributions, presenting Aeneas as faithless on the basis of precedent well documented by Starks throughout Aeneid 4, the imagined time of composition of Dido’s letter.53 When Ovid’s Dido calls Aeneas faithless and untrustworthy, she does not invent it herself but elaborates on a tendency already present in the Aeneid to cast aspersions on the character of Rome’s distant forefather. It is also important to remember that the nature of the two works—a twelve-book epic as opposed to a roughly two-hundred-line elegy—helps Ovid to condense and thus intensify the negative questions present in the Aeneid for greater impact and disruption of the ebb and flow of Virgil’s ample nar­ rative.54 In the Aeneid there is time for Aeneas to recover his position as a generally positive protagonist, while in Heroides 7 there is not.55 Ovid’s presentation of Dido exploits the way Virgil has conditioned his audience, through Aeneas’ arrival at Carthage and Dido’s regal entry into the poem, to think of her as “decidedly non-Punic,”56 and intensifies that sense in the concentrated format of his fictive letter. In both these examples—Dido’s land acquisition and the question of Trojan and Carthaginian fides—Rome is no longer the fixed frame of reference. Ovid’s letter clearly notes the different perspectives the Aeneid suggests but does not fully articulate and makes them explicit in his letter from Dido to Aeneas. “Troubling ghost images” Another important question of perspective that Virgil introduces subtly and that Ovid amplifies ties more directly to authority and truthfulness in the telling of Rome’s foundation myth. In particular, the multiple spousal ghosts who speak—or refuse to—in the Aeneid are reactivated in Heroides 7 in ways that undermine the authority of the Aeneid’s narrative. In each case— that of Creusa, Sychaeus, and Dido herself—the Virgilian ghosts have important roles to play in the narrative of the Aeneid and in enabling its plot to move forward. Ovid’s Dido conjures up these ghosts, however, only to show how unreliable or self-serving the stories constructed about them are. While Virgil’s Dido simply notes et nunc magna mei sub terras ibit imago

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(4.654), Ovid’s Dido promises her ghost will haunt Aeneas if he leaves her. This haunting, I argue here, takes the form of questioning the reliability of the Aeneid through pointed references to its spousal ghosts. Read together in this way, these ghosts collectively interrupt the Aeneid’s forward progress right at what seems to me the end point of Heroides 7: Dido and Aeneas’ encounter in the underworld in book 6. In her letter, Dido lets Aeneas know her death will doubtless be the outcome of his departure, that it will be his fault—“You will be called the reason for my death” (tu potius leti causa ferere mei, 64), she tells him—and that she will be done in by his deceit (Phrygia Dido fraude coacta mori, 68). She is right in the actual facts; soon after her letter is concluded, she will pierce herself with Aeneas’ sword and collapse upon her own funeral pyre.57 Here in this moment of confirmation in Ovid’s letter of what is yet to come in the Aeneid, Dido’s letter acts as a prism of references that refract our attention to a range of points in the Aeneid. As she conjures up for Aeneas the sad and bloody image of his deceased spouse (coniugis ante oculos deceptae stabit imago / tristis et effusis sanguinolenta comis, 69–70), deceased because of his abandonment of her, Ovid’s readers know she means herself but cannot help also seeing the ghost of Aeneas’ first “deserted” wife Creusa.58 The image of Dido we see in book 6 of the Aeneid also comes to mind, and even that of Dido’s deceased husband Sychaeus.59 The convenient feminine gender of the word Ovid chooses for this ghost—imago—permits its distribution over all of these important corpses, whether male or female. Moreover, Ovid seems to insist that we call them to mind, again by his choice of words. The image is specifically that of a coniunx, or wedded partner, and the word is especially prevalent in the epic context. Using this specific term necessarily calls to mind the single most controversial question in the Dido-Aeneas episode: were they married? Or did Dido only think they were? The answers in both Virgil and Ovid are very clear, and they do not match. In the Aeneid, as its readers know, Dido “calls their union marriage, and with this name she covers up her fault” (coniugium vocat, hoc praetexit nomine culpam, Aen. 4.172). Dido’s insistence in Heroides 7 on her role as Aeneas’ legitimate wife60 complicates the question significantly and places an obstacle to the Aeneid’s tale of direct progression from the shores of Troy to those of Italy. Ovid’s letter is both consistent in Dido’s self-representation as Aeneas’ wife and at the same time divergent in that it insists on the correctness of her interpretation.



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Coniugis Sanguinolenta Imago Ovid’s Dido introduces the Aeneid’s ghosts with her promise to Aeneas that “the image of your deceived wife (coniugis . . . imago, 69) will stand before your eyes, sad and bloodied, with her hair in disarray,”61 picking up on her threat at Aeneid 4.384–86 that after her death she will be present everywhere as an umbra (omnibus umbra locis adero).62 This is followed immediately by her assertion in Ovid that Aeneas is a habitual liar, about everything, including his abandonment of Creusa (81–84). Here Dido pointedly recalls Aeneas’ report of Creusa in the Aeneid, another imago (Aen. 2.272) of a coniunx (Aen. 2.277). Her conjuring of Creusa reminds us that Aeneas was the sole witness to the speech Virgil provides for her at Aeneid 2.777–89 in which Creusa releases Aeneas to pursue his destiny; there is no one to provide a competing perspective on his story.63 It is in this context that the multiple imagines Dido evokes in Heroides 7 appear, and the first of these—shortly after she invokes her sad and bloodied self—is Aeneas’ first “abandoned” wife Creusa: coniugis ante oculos deceptae stabit imago tristis et effusis sanguinolenta comis . . . . . . Omnia mentiris; neque enim tua fallere lingua incipit a nobis, primaque plector ego. Si quaeras, ubi sit formosi mater Iuli, occidit a duro sola relicta viro. haec mihi narraras et me movere . . . (Her. 7 69–70, 81–85) The image (imago) of your deceived wife (coniugis) will stand before your eyes, sad and bloodied, with her hair in disarray. . . . You lie about everything: and your tongue did not even start its deceit with me, nor am I the first to be embraced by its lies. If you should ask where the mother of lovely Iulus is, she fell, left behind by a heartless husband (viro). You told me these things, and you moved me . . . To be clear, the imago Dido notes in lines 69–70 at the start of this quote is herself.64 Creusa appears when Dido refers to Aeneas’ other lies in line 81. Here the insistence that Aeneas is a liar, and that his perfidy has not started

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with Dido, is important too. It explicitly questions the account Aeneas has given to Dido and thus that Virgil has given to us in the Aeneid, suggesting that perhaps Aeneas was in fact lying there, too,65 and that readers ought not take his account—of anything—at face value. Similarly, Dido’s insistence that Aeneas told her the story of Creusa (i.e., in Aen. 2), and moved her in the telling, reminds us that as external readers we, too, may have been taken in by what was nothing but a tall tale.66 Coniunx Erepta What is it that we, as readers conditioned by Virgil’s epic, should question?67 Aeneas’ short account of Creusa’s disappearance that Ovid’s Dido found so moving is as follows: Dum sequor et nota excedo regione viarum, heu misero coniunx fatone erepta Creusa substitit, erravitne via seu lacessa resedit, incertum; nec post oculis est reddita nostris. (Aen. 2.738–40) While I follow and stray from the known parts of the roads, alas! My wife (coniunx) Creusa either stood still, snatched by miserable fate, or wandered from the road, or sat down in exhaustion—it is uncertain which. Nor was she afterwards returned to my eyes. As Aeneas tells it, in her disappearance Creusa, his coniunx, is the actor. She came to a stop (substitit, 739). She may have lost her way (erravit, 739). She may have collapsed in weariness (lacessa resedit, 739). He himself is involved only as the poor soul to whose sight she was not returned (oculis . . . nostris, 740). Even with passive verbs Creusa remains the subject (erepta, 738; nec . . . est reddita, 740): she was snatched away; he did not abandon her. This is not the whole story, though, and Virgil is careful to provide Aeneas with concrete exculpation. Not only does Aeneas assert that he went back to look for Creusa, calling for her repeatedly (Aen. 2.767–70), but she actually appeared to him as he ran through the burning city of Troy: Infelix simulacrum atque ipsius umbra Creusae visa mihi ante oculos et nota maiora imago.



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Obstipui, steteruntque comae et vox faucibus haesit. Tum sic adfari et curas his demere dictis: “quid tantum insano iuvat indulgere dolori, o dulcis coniunx? non haec sine numine divum eveniunt; nec te hinc comitem asportare Creusam fas aut ille sinit superi regnator Olympi . . . . . . Sed me magna deum genetrix his detinet oris. Iamque vale et nati serva communis amorem.” Haec ubi dicta dedit, lacrimantem et multa volentem dicere deseruit, tenuisque recessit in auras. (Aen. 2.772–79, 788–91) The unhappy simulacrum, and shade of Creusa herself appeared before my eyes, an image (imago) larger than the one I knew. I stood agape and my hair stood on end and my voice stuck in my throat. Then she addressed me thus, and took away my cares with these words: “Why is it so pleasing to you to indulge in mad grief, o sweet husband (coniunx)? These things are not happening without the power of gods, and it is not possible to carry Creusa away from here as your companion, nor does the ruler of highest Olympus allow it. . . . Instead the great mother of the gods detains me on these shores. And so now be well, and preserve the love of our common son.” When she gave these words, she deserted me as I cried and wished to say many things, and she vanished into the breezes. Creusa’s lengthy speech, in the ellipsis above, informs Aeneas of his future travails and of his eventual arrival in Italy, where he will reach the end of his travels and all will be well. In fact, he will gain prosperous affairs, a kingdom, and a royal wife; again the word is coniunx (783). This is important for a number of reasons, especially as the audience for this embedded speech is Dido herself. Dido thus knows only too well Aeneas’ destiny, and that no matter how well she and her kingdom may match parts of this prophecy, she is not a part of Aeneas’ destiny. When Creusa appears she is infelix, a simulacrum, an umbra (772), and finally an imago (773), and one larger than the real-life Creusa. This repeated insistence on describing her with synonyms for “ghost” is an unmistakable

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sign that we are meant to know for certain that Creusa is dead. Nevertheless, she speaks, and what she says is striking. Her purpose, as Aeneas interprets it, is very clear: it is to ease his cares (curas . . . demere, 775), to halt his self-indulgence, to remind him that the gods are behind everything that is happening (777), especially her desertion at Troy (778–79, 788–89), and to remind him that his most important job is to preserve their son (789), who will become the forefather of Rome and, perhaps most importantly for Virgil’s telling of the story, of the Julian family to which Augustus belonged. Creusa thus authenticates Aeneas’ narrative much as Virgil does in his telling of it.68 Virgil’s Dido seemed to believe Aeneas’ account, but Ovid’s Dido becomes skeptical and urges external readers—whether Ovid’s contemporaries or modern readers—to do the same. This is not simply because Dido is a sympathetic character or because she presents us with another perspective but also because Dido raises an important point: we must take Aeneas at his word, as there were no witnesses to this encounter. This is especially important when we notice that Aeneas insists Creusa abandoned him, deseruit (779), rather than having been left behind by him, relicta (Her. 7.84), as Ovid’s Dido sees it, and indeed as a literalist would insist upon reading even Virgil’s account.69 Whatever his motivations, Aeneas’ interpretation is clearly not “factual,” and Ovid’s Dido calls this to our attention. Inhumati Imago Coniugis Just as we encounter Creusa’s shade in Virgil through Aeneas’ telling, and by his report of her words, so we meet the ghost of Dido’s dead husband Sychaeus through the report of an embedded character, this time the goddess Venus. The context is Venus’ report of his murder by Dido’s own brother Pygmalion. The motivation for this report is that Venus wants Aeneas to know where he is and where he may find help for himself and his shipwrecked crew:70 . . . factumque diu celavit et aegram multa malus simulans, vana spe lusit amantem. Ipsa sed in somnis inhumati venit imago coniugis, ora modis attollens pallida miris; crudelis aras traiectaque pectora ferro nudavit, caecumque domus scelus omne retexit.



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Tum celerare fugam patriaque excedere suadet, auxiliumque viae veteres tellure recludit thesauros, ignotum argenti pondus et auri. (Aen. 1.351–59) “He (Pygmalion) concealed the deed for a long time and wickedly feigning many things deceived Dido, the suffering lover, with empty hope. But the image (imago) itself of her unburied husband (coniugis) came to her in her sleep, raising his ashen face in a strange way; he laid bare the cruel altars and his chest, pierced through with iron, and he uncovered the entire unseen crime of the house. Then he persuaded her to hasten flight and to depart from her fatherland, and he revealed ancient treasures in the ground as aid for her journey, an unknown weight of silver and gold.” Venus’ story of the ghostly encounter is followed immediately by Dido’s rushed departure from Tyre and her founding of Carthage at 1.362 and following, a scene that parallels Aeneas’ own departure from Carthage as he heads on to pursue his destiny and its Italian kingdoms. Whether this is designed to be a hint for Aeneas or not is hard to tell, but it does provide a cementing point of commonality: Dido and Aeneas are both refugees, and thus she is likely to be sympathetic to his plight.71 Unlike Aeneas, Dido is not the one who tells the story of her spouse’s death. Instead, it is Venus’ version that Aeneas hears. Ovid will permit Dido to speak of Sychaeus herself; here in Virgil, though, the message is controlled by Venus. Like Creusa, Sychaeus does speak, but unlike Creusa we do not have his words, only Venus’ rapid-fire report. According to the goddess, he revealed his wounds (355–56), uncovered Pygmalion’s hidden crime (356), persuaded Dido to leave (357), and disclosed the hiding place of Pygmalion’s treasure (358–59). Sychaeus himself is not truly given voice. Even so, Sychaeus is not entirely unlike the other ghosts that Ovid’s letter calls to mind. He, too, is an imago of a legitimate spouse, coniugis (354). We know he is dead because he is described as “unburied” (inhumati, 353) and his cheeks are preternaturally pale (354). He, like Creusa, gives instructions for his spouse to let go, to move on, to find a new home, although Sychaeus does Creusa one better by providing Dido with funds for her voyage. Further, this is not Sychaeus’ only haunting of either poem. Later in the Aeneid’s

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crucial book 4, when Dido is at her most frenzied, Dido’s first husband features again, in the spot where she cultivates his memory: Praeterea fuit in tectis de marmore templum coniugis antiqui, miro quod honore colebat, velleribus niveis et festa fronde revinctum: hinc exaudiri voces et verba vocantis visa viri, nox cum terras obscura teneret (Aen. 4.457–61) In the palace, moreover, there was a marble shrine to her former husband (coniugis), which she tended with amazing devotion, and it was bound with white fleeces and festive foliage: from here she seemed to hear the voice and words of her husband (viri) calling to her, while dark night held the land. Here Virgil, as he often does, paints Dido sympathetically. She honors her dead husband, visiting his shrine, tending it diligently (458–59). She seems to hear his voice (voces, 460) and indeed his very words (verba, 460) calling to her. Here again, as in Venus’ report of his death, Sychaeus seems to speak, but we are not told what he says. Instead, in what follows Virgil leads us to believe it may simply be the customary nighttime songs of owls (462–63). Ovid, on the other hand, will make explicit what Virgil here only implies, insisting that it was not owls Dido heard, but her husband’s exact words. In Dido’s telling as Ovid imagines it in Heroides 7, the episode is suggestively located in her letter after her epiphany about her marriage to Aeneas. It was not nymphs who blessed their union, she now says: it was Furies who howled in tragic foreshadowing of its end (95–96).72 Dido’s request for Sychaeus’ forgiveness follows this revelation and provides ideal preparation for the letter’s interaction with Aeneas’ trip to the underworld in Aeneid 6. Ovid’s Dido presents her own, first-person experience at her dead husband’s tomb as follows: Exige, laese pudor, poenas, violataque lecti iura neque ad cineres fama retenta meos, vosque mei manes animaeque cinisque Sychaei ad quem, me miseram, plena pudoris eo.



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Est mihi marmorea sacratus in aede Sychaeus; appositae frondes velleraque alba tegunt. Hinc ego me sensi noto quater ore citari; ipse sono tenui dixit “Elissa, veni!” nulla mora est: venio, venio tibi debita coniunx; sum tamen admissi tarda pudore mei! Da veniam culpae: decepit idoneus auctor; invidiam noxae detrahit ille meae. (Her. 7.97–106) Take your penalties, o wounded shame and the violated laws of the marriage bed, and reputation not retained for my ashes. And you ghost, spirit, and ashes of my Sychaeus, toward whom, o pitiful me, I go full of shame. Sychaeus is honored by me in a marble temple; arranged foliage and white fleeces cover it. From here I felt myself to be called four times with a voice known to me; he himself said with a wisp of a voice, “Elissa [Dido], come!” There is no delay: I am coming, I am coming as the wife (coniunx) owed to you; but I am slow because of the shame of my crime. Grant forgiveness to my sin: a suitable authority deceived me; he removes the fault from my offense. At this precise moment in Dido’s story we see a new phenomenon in Ovid’s letter and how it interacts with the Aeneid. Dido’s mention of her imago at Her. 7.69 had a prismatic effect, serving as the focal nexus for recalling imagines in Ovid’s source text, refracting our attention back onto imagines in Virgil.73 With this refractive pattern, Ovid had reinforced, through his allusions to the Aeneid’s multiple ghosts, the effect Ralph Hexter sees in the Aeneid, by which Virgil presents a multifaceted Dido “not so that she thereby attains three-dimensionality but, on the contrary, in order to frustrate any attempt on the reader’s part to see her as univocal and coherent. Vergil deflects the interpreter’s gaze from this resolution-defying image to each of the multiple perspectives from which a focus would be possible.”74 In Heroides 7 Ovid follows this fragmented path in his Dido’s invocation of the Aeneid’s imagines: even while writing about her own ghost, she deflects our gaze from that imago onto the multiple ghosts readers of the Aeneid know to be part of her and Aeneas’ joined narrative. Here in Heroides 7’s assimilation of Sychaeus’ ghost in Aeneid 4, however, we also see the nascent

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reintegration of Dido’s refracted perspectives. In Heroides 7, that is, Ovid consolidates Sychaeus into a character who speaks on his own behalf and who summons his wife to his side, away from her deceitful lover, and reasserts her primary identity as his wife. It is at precisely this point, moreover, that Dido’s fragmented ghosts cohere into a more concrete and condemnatory image: in Dido’s remembrance of Sychaeus we no longer have a refracting prism but an absorptive textual sponge. In this passage, that is, Ovid brings together several crucial concepts in the Aeneid in this one spot: a concern with reputation or fama (98),75 marital shame or pudor (100, 104), fault (culpae, 105), and forgiveness (veniam, 105). In what began with a fragmented presentation of the Aeneid’s ghosts triggered by Ovid’s redeployment of Dido’s threat that she will haunt Aeneas, Ovid responds to what Hexter sees as Virgil’s encouragement of “his reader to undertake such questioning, urging him on by paradigmatic puzzles.”76 Ovid (re)solves this puzzle by providing a voice to Dido that articulates such questioning, especially in terms of the Aeneid’s presentation of its spousal ghosts. Focalizing through Dido’s perspective forces the reader to take seriously her point of view, even, or especially, if that means one is left with what Hexter calls “troubling ghost images” at the periphery of one’s reading.77 In the case of Heroides 7, the final ghost image involved is that of Dido herself in her encounter in book 6, through its specific mention of Sychaeus’ death and the shrine Dido erected to his memory—here identical but far bleaker; gone are the “festive fronds” of the Aeneid (4.458). When Dido tells her reader that it is Sychaeus to whom she goes as his legitimate spouse (venio, venio tibi debita coniunx, 103), her words correspond precisely to her response to her meeting with Aeneas in the underworld, where she retreats to Sychaeus in the shadowy darkness. In just these few lines, then, Ovid explodes the poem’s interaction with Virgil’s text and its key moral questions and launches his readers from past to future. In both texts Dido seems to hear her former husband’s voice, but only in Ovid are we given his words, a simple “Elissa, veni!” (102).78 According to Ovid’s Dido, Sychaeus summons her to his side. By providing these specific words, as Duncan Kennedy notes, Ovid calls to mind Dido and Aeneas’ final meeting in the underworld,79 where he will have no control over his erstwhile “wife.” The omission of Sychaeus’ actual words in the Aeneid, on the other hand, permits Dido more leeway in her decision to



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join Aeneas in what she called matrimony. Beyond this important clarification, though, what Dido’s voice does when Ovid lets her run free is to admit her own fault but without exculpating the idoneus auctor (105), the appealing man responsible for her deception. This last point becomes all the more meaningful when we consider that it may refer to Virgil and his version of the story as easily as, or as well as, to Aeneas. As Peter Knox rightly points out, “the phrase is most commonly used of trustworthy authors:”80 Dido may just as easily be saying, “I trusted Virgil!” as “I trusted Aeneas!” and that she did so—in error—because they were both so convincing.81 The implication for readers of both Heroides 7 and the Aeneid is that we, too, as readers of the Aeneid may be taken in by a story that is compelling and moving but whose allure is not to be trusted. If we press the point slightly further, though, the criticism may become even more pointed given how Augustus “presented himself as an auctor” and what Ioannis Ziogas calls the “intriguing overlap between Augustus, the auc­ tor of the new regime, and the Augustan poets, the auctores who were writing under the principate.”82 Ziogas further notes that in his insistence on publishing the Aeneid against Virgil’s wishes, “the prince actively becomes the auctor of the Aeneid, not only the guarantor or sponsor of the work but, to some extent, its authorizer.”83 In this sense, the chain of deception may extend not only to Virgil and Aeneas, but indeed to the princeps himself. Infelix Dido From Sychaeus, a shade who speaks but whose words we do not hear in Virgil, and from Ovid’s articulation of that shade’s words, we return again to Virgil and a ghost who does not speak at all: Dido in the underworld. We are two books in the future in respect to Heroides 7, and again Aeneas tells the story, but unlike his reported encounter with Creusa, he takes an active role. First, though, Virgil sets the scene in a way that supports Aeneas’ role as the one authorized to speak and to direct readers’ response to the episode. Aeneas stood next to Dido, Virgil tells us; he recognized her, cried, and addressed her with sweet love.84 It is his voice alone that we hear, and that voice essentially revisits the hero’s words to Dido upon his departure from Carthage. Importantly, however, his words here also intersect with those Ovid pens for Dido herself in Heroides 7.85 In Virgil Aeneas addresses Dido’s ghost as follows:

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Infelix Dido, verus mihi nuntius ergo venerat exstinctam ferroque extrema secutam? Funeris heu tibi causa fui? Per sidera iuro, per superos et si qua fides tellure sub ima est, invitus, regina, tuo de litore cessi. Sed me iussa deum, quae nunc has ire per umbras, per loca senta situ cogunt noctemque profundam, imperiis egere suis; nec credere quivi hunc tantum tibi me discessu ferre dolorem. Siste gradum teque aspectu ne subtrahe nostro. Quem fugis? Extremum fato quod te adloquor hoc est. (Aen. 6.456–66) “Unhappy Dido, had a truthful messenger come to me, announcing that you were dead, and that you had sought your end by the sword? Alas, was I the cause of your death? I swear by the stars, by the gods above, and—if there is any faith deep under the earth—unwillingly, o queen, did I depart from your shore. But the orders of the gods drove me with their commands, the ones which now compel me to go through these shades, through places rough with neglect, and through deep night. Nor was I able to believe that, because of my departure, I would visit so great a grief upon you. Stop your step and do not draw yourself away from my sight. Whom do you flee? This is the last word that I may address to you, according to fate.” Aeneas’ first concern here is clearly to exculpate himself. He is incredulous (456) that he has been the cause of Dido’s death (457–58),86 just as she—in Ovid’s imagined letter—said he would be. He vows that he left her unwillingly (459–60), that the gods made him do it (470–71). Yet even his assertion that he never imagined her grief would be so great lets us know that he had entertained the possibility, if only to dismiss it: he was not able to believe it, he says—nec credere quivi (463)—yet he was clearly able to conceive of the thought. Nonetheless, he cannot believe that she flees from him, who never meant her any harm (466). He is, we might say, entirely sym­ pathetic. We feel for Aeneas, and doubtless we should; none of this is really his fault. And yet, his assertion that the gods were responsible echoes very



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closely Creusa’s own words releasing Aeneas from responsibility for her death (2.777–89), and, indeed, his words to Dido when she discovered his impending departure from Carthage (Aen. 4.356–61). It is as if here Aeneas repeats the standard words one must say when abandoning a woman to her death in order to achieve a divinely imposed goal, as if he is following a script.87 Given that the goal in this case is the founding of Rome, the establishing of its great empire, and its administration by Augustus, as will shortly be made clear in the parade of future Roman heroes that closes book 6, we may ask whether these oft-repeated phrases ring true for Virgil’s audience or whether they reflected conflicted feelings in his contemporaries about the costs of such a mission. We might ask at this point whether Aeneas bothered to read Dido’s letter. While this may seem like a pointless question, it is worth asking in order to consider precisely how Ovid is playing with text and time. We are now in book 6 of the Aeneid. Dido is dead, having spoken (and as Ovid would have it, written) her last words two books prior in the Aeneid’s time frame. Thus even though Ovid was writing a good decade after the Aeneid’s composition, what we are now reading comes—in narrative time—after the content of the letter Ovid himself penned. Ovid, that is, inserted Dido’s letter into a particular point in time in the Aeneid, and while his characters do not know what will happen after the letter is imagined as being written, Ovid does. His omniscience, like ours, comes from having had access to the entirety of the Aeneid, and he may choose in his own work to reference events from within that narrative even if they have not yet happened.88 This is just what Ovid does when he crafts content for Heroides 7 that will then essentially be recalled by Aeneas’ words (that had already been written by Virgil) later in book 6. This kind of frozen time is typical of the Heroides, which likewise freeze their heroines at a specific moment in time, while the heroes the letters address are free to continue their literary lives.89 We as the external readers of both Heroides 7 and the Aeneid, that is, ought to wonder whether Ovid conceived of Aeneas in Aeneid 6 as having read Dido’s letter and simply moving on essentially unaffected. We ought to question what information Ovid imagines he has, how he has it, and why he insists upon his own ignorance. It is, if we are careful readers of both texts, almost impossible not to. Indeed, Aeneas’ reference to a nuntius at 6.456 begs this question; a nuntius is clearly not an epistula, but the very idea of a message is suspicious.90

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Yet Aeneas’ speech—whether or not it is a sign that he has received news either of or from Dido—is not the whole story, and Dido’s response to it is important as well. Here, too, the seeds Ovid has planted in his portrayals of both Dido and Sychaeus as ghosts sprout into full blossom in Aeneid 6: Talibus Aeneas ardentem et torva tuentem lenibat dictis animum lacrimasque ciebat. Illa solo fixos oculos aversa tenebat nec magis incepto vultum sermone movetur quam si dura silex aut stet Marpesia cautes. Tandem corripuit sese atque inimica refugit in nemus umbriferum, coniunx ubi pristinus illi respondet curis aequatque Sychaeus amorem. Nec minus Aeneas casu percussus iniquo prosequitur lacrimis longe et miseratur euntem. (Aen. 6.467–76) With such words Aeneas attempted to soothe her burning spirit and fierce stare and sent forth tears. She, turned away, held her eyes fixed on the ground, nor was her face moved any more by the speech he had made than if she stood there as hard flint or the Marpesian crag. At last she snatched herself away and fled as an enemy into the shadefilled grove, where her former husband (coniunx) Sychaeus responds to her cares and returns her love. Nevertheless Aeneas follows her far with tears, struck by unfair fate, and pities her as she goes. Just as with Aeneas’ report of Creusa’s ghost, Virgil’s first concern here is clearly to exculpate Aeneas. He shows Aeneas attempting to console Dido’s spirit (lenibat . . . animum, 468) and pouring forth his own tears (lacri­ masque ciebat, 468).91 Dido, on the other hand, he shows as burning (with rage, most likely: ardentem, 467) and giving evil looks (torva tuentem, 467) when she looks up at all (illa solo fixos oculos aversa tenebat, 489). That Dido remains “unmoved” (Aen. 6.470) here is another connection point with Heroides 7, where Dido asserted she was “moved” by Aeneas’ account of Creusa’s death (Her. 7.85). Now that she has experienced the full range of her relationship with the Trojan hero, she is no longer moved by his appeals.



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Most importantly, perhaps, Dido here does exactly what Heroides 7 has her say she will do—return to her former husband (Her. 7.103–4).92 Even so, Virgil leaves Aeneas with the last word: his mental state—crushed by grief and pity (475–76)—ends the episode. Dido’s lack of response to this last word, however, is significant, especially in the context of Heroides 7. What makes Ovid’s letter so effective is its grounding in and revoicing of Virgil’s canonical text and his reframing of its narrative as essentially selfmocking, with Aeneas as an unconvincing voice that has lost its sole claim to truth and authority. At the same time, it is not only Aeneas’ voice that is undermined but indeed his central role in the poem. While Aeneas is depicted in Virgil as the fixed pole around which Dido wanders in Aeneid 6, Ovid’s letter interacts with this crucial episode in ways that destabilize Aeneas’ experience as the focus of its narrative. By shifting the focus back to Dido and pointing to this moment in the Aeneid, Ovid’s letter emphasizes the epic poem’s inability to pin her down; as with the other ghosts in the epic, we are now aware that there are multiple ways to read Dido’s silence.93 Aeneas watches her wander (erravit) while he is the fixed point of reference (stetit) and is powerless to control her or elicit a response. It is also significant that Ovid directs us toward Aeneid 6, “the point when the poem’s plot becomes less the escape from the Trojan past than the actualization of the Roman future,” as Andrew Feldherr has noted.94 Unmoved by Aeneas’ entreaties, much as Aeneas is unmoved by hers in both Aeneid 4 and Heroides 7, Dido’s ghost retreats to Sychaeus in stony silence. Ovid has prepared us, by pro­ viding Sychaeus’ summons to Dido,95 for her choice of her former husband and rejection of Rome’s ancestor. The modern reader has choices, of course, as to how to see Dido’s lack of response to Aeneas. Is it, as Feldherr would have it, an instance of “alternative voices conspicuously drowned out” by the Virgilian or Aenean perspective?96 Or is it that Dido does not even deem Aeneas’ pleas worthy of her response?97 With Heroides 7 in mind, readers have a clearer understanding of both why Dido slips silently away from Aeneas and how that reflects on Virgil’s hero. By directing his readers to precisely this point, Ovid has continued the trend Desmond identifies of decentering “Aeneas as the thematic focus of the Aeneid story and thereby [disrupting] the imperial theme that Aeneas ostensibly represents.”98 While Aeneas remains central, that is, Ovid’s letter has cast doubt upon both Aeneas the hero and Virgil as the author of his tale.

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In this interplay of Ovidian and Virgilian imagines, Aeneas tells us how he jettisoned Creusa with her blessing; Venus uses Sychaeus to explain Dido’s presence in Carthage and thus her ability to assist Aeneas; Ovid’s Sychaeus urges Dido to his side in the underworld, where Dido’s silence allows Aeneas to control the narrative but at the same time rejects his excuses. This parade of ghostly spouses is triggered by Heroides 7’s reminder of these imagines, and it urges us to question the authority of the Aeneid’s account of all of them, and thus perhaps even the authority of the Aeneid as a whole. Throughout Ovid’s elegiac letter, his responses to Virgil that corroborate the Aeneid do so skeptically, almost demanding that Ovid’s reader reconsider the entirety of Virgil’s epic, the legitimacy of its tale, and whether or not it presents the only true version of events. Read this way, Ovid’s seventh Heroides letter becomes an obstacle to the narrative of Rome’s foundation as told by Virgil. Throughout Dido’s letter, Ovid’s critical corroboration and correction of the Aeneid, his privileging of non-Roman perspectives, and his summoning of dead Virgilian spouses calls into question the reliability of the Aeneid’s account and disrupts the epic’s forward progress toward the “Roman future” Feldherr identifies. In it, Ovid elaborates on ambiguities present in Virgil’s text from the overtly foreign perspective of Dido, presenting us with a voice that questions the imperfect future embodied in the empire without end, the imperium sine fine, the Aeneid insists has been granted by Jupiter (1.279) and that is, at the time of Ovid’s writing, being administered by Aeneas’ descendant Augustus.99 In this way, Ovid succeeds in interrupting the ideology of a pro-Roman, and hence pro-Augustan, Aeneid by doing precisely what Katharine Toll identifies in this chapter’s introductory quote.100 He changes the chief ideology put forth in the Aeneid, insisting on giving his elegiac Dido a “subtly different” voice that amplifies her whispers of dissent from the epic’s overall narrative, whispers that are already present within it.101 In this first chapter I have attempted to show how the most contem­po­ rary of Ovid’s Heroides—in that its source text is a work of literature nearly contemporary to Ovid—raises important and unsettling questions not only about that source text but about its subject matter, its authority, and its implications for the world Ovid and his readers inhabit. I will expand from the approach used in this chapter, that of reading Heroides 7 exclusively in relation to its source text, in the next chapter’s analysis of Heroides 1, the let­ ter from Penelope to Ulysses. There I read Heroides 1 against the backdrop



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of post-civil-war Italy. I do so in terms of how Ovid’s Penelope changes the story we know from Homer’s Odyssey’s to call into question the narrative authority of his source and to remind readers of the possibility of multiple perspectives on Ovid’s contemporary world as well. I also examine the letter’s interaction with near-contemporary poems that similarly allude to the turbulent context in which Ovid lived and wrote. Finally, I examine how Ovid’s reuse of Penelope and her letter in his exile poetry retrospectively activates and thus supports such an overtly political reading of Heroides 1.

chapter 2

Viscera nostra Heroides 1

T

h e l ast chap t er i llu st rated how Dido’s letter to Aeneas calls into question much of what the Aeneid presents as truth about Rome’s forefather, with particular focus on perspective, witness, and authority, often picking up on subtle invitations available in Virgil’s canonical text. A question that has long bedeviled critics of Ovid’s first Heroides letter, that from Penelope to Ulysses, addresses a similar concern: Ovid’s Penelope blatantly contradicts Homer in her assertion that she sent Telemachus to Pylos to seek information about his father from Nestor (Her. 1.63–64). From the very start of the collection, and with his most deeply entrenched literary source, Ovid signals his concern with truth and possible alternate perspectives on canonical narratives.1 Here, too, Ovid picks up on a concern already present in his source text, as Nancy Felson-Rubin has shown in her analysis of Homer’s “metapragmatic” signals to the reader to “Be cautious. Suspect the word. Watch out for liars.”2 In the case of Dido in chapter 1, the narrative in question has clear implications for the founding of Rome, while for Penelope such a connection is not evident at first glance. Yet here, too, I argue, Ovid shows how considering an alternate reading of Penelope and her story can comment on the consequences of Rome’s recent civil wars and its changing republic. This chapter offers such a reading of Penelope’s letter by examining points of divergence from the Odyssey in terms of the authority of Homer’s version and of the letter’s concern with a longed-for return to the status quo, embodied especially in Penelope’s insistence on her role as Ulysses’ wife. I solidify this reading by exposing Ovid’s subtle engagement at a key point in Penelope’s letter (lines 51–56) with near-contemporary poems of Virgil 40



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and Propertius that question the costs of the civil wars that were the backdrop of Ovid’s youth. I conclude with Ovid’s own engagement with Heroides 1 in the exilic Tristia and Epistulae Ex Ponto, arguing that this engagement retrospectively inscribes Penelope’s letter into an overtly political context and signals a political reading as possible already at the time of composition. Nostalgia Given that its heroine is embedded in a distant fictional past, what possible political reading could Heroides 1 engender?3 Penelope’s concern throughout her letter with status, legitimacy, and agency provides an intriguing parallel for the citizen male as Augustus’ regime gradually solidifies and its implications for the erosion of political power of Roman citizens become clearer. Despite the apparent novelty of this approach to the Heroides,4 I am fundamentally responding to the conservative reading of Penelope’s letter that has long prevailed. Jacobson again proves the touchstone in his assertion that Penelope, by Ovid’s time, was “no longer subject for literary development.”5 In his assertion that Penelope’s utility as a literary character had been exhausted, Jacobson hints that Ovid must be making a different use of this heroine. My suggestion is that Ovid instead uses her, consciously or not, as a tool for political commentary that expresses exhaustion and frustration from decades of war and a repressive peace. My reading of the collection’s opening letter takes as its central theme Penelope’s preoccupation with her status as Ulysses’ wife and considers it as a reflection of contemporary concerns of citizen status and political power in the burgeoning empire. Her cry that she must always retain this privileged role and that it be recognized by those around her (Her. 1.84) may thus correspond to the concerns of citizens determined to remain an important part of Rome’s political process despite the erosion of senatorial power by the time of Ovid’s writing.6 Her focus on the decimation of her family’s resources and herself as a woman unable to resist the suitors’ predations recalls the experience of Ovid’s contemporaries during the years of civil war and triumviral seizures of estates that left citizens bankrupt, uncertain of their place in the world around them, and powerless to end the conflict without turning at last to Octavian. Ovid’s Penelope, like his Dido, follows her source text in many respects but often does so in ways that illuminate Ovid’s own context. While Penelope’s letter opens with an appeal to Ulysses to arrive in person rather than write

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a response (Her. 1.1–2), Ovid follows this beginning with Penelope’s quick assertion that she is aware of Troy’s destruction, her sharp observation that the fall of Troy was hardly worth so much sacrifice (4), and her account of how the report of each fallen Greek made her fear all the more for her absent spouse (11–22). Knowing the war is long over and that other Greek leaders have returned (25), Ovid’s Penelope’s goal is the same as that of Homer: she wants her husband to return as soon as possible. Read in the context of Rome’s disruption after the civil war, a larger goal emerges, that of a return to what Penelope—even twenty years after the fact—thinks of as normal, namely, to their prior relationship and her prior status. Patricia Rosenmeyer has suggested a parallel between Ovid in exile and his heroines, who “are forced to beg for a return to their previous position, namely the status of a stable relationship (with a lover or Augustus) or a secure home.”7 In this chapter I hope to show that the seeds of this parallel are present here as well. Ovid himself is writing in a position similar to that of his Penelope, at a roughly twenty year remove to the first Augustan settlement of 27 BCE. The intervening years have brought, among other changes, the gradual erosion of republican governmental norms such as the traditional role of male citizens in elections—as embodied, for example, in Augustus’ appointment of suffect consuls of his own choosing8—and of elected officials in proposing legislation.9 Given their gradual edging out of the republic, Holzberg’s reading of Penelope as an exclusus amator at lines 7–1010 provides a parallel for Ovid and his peers as exclusus from the republic and looks ahead to Ovid in exile as literally exclusus from Rome.11 Her key concern in the Odyssey is with delaying her suitors—keeping them exclusi—and Ovid addresses this himself in his insistence on Penelope’s weaving at lines 9–10. The ruse features in Heroides 1, not with epic gravity as the sole foil but with real world concerns as part of that background as well; Penelope’s delaying tactic provides the crucial time required for a return to normal.12 In the literary realm of both Homer and Ovid this means the return of Penelope’s husband, but in the context of Ovid’s composition, a return to the prewar status quo means a return to Rome’s republican past.13 In this sense, Heroides 1 may be seen as hopeful: readers of the letter know that Penelope’s plea will be successful, and harmony will be restored for her. At this point in time, then— the last decade BCE—perhaps hope remains that the same may be true for



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Ovid and his contemporaries; later readers of the poem, however, know such hopes will be disappointed. Penelope’s letter highlights, in particular, concerns about family and its loss—a focus that would also resonate with Ovid’s audience, especially given the poem’s allusions to works of Virgil and Propertius discussed below. Again like Ovid’s Dido, Penelope also explores alternatives to the narrative present in Ovid’s source.14 Her focus on those returned from war and her emphasis on legitimate family ties includes the clearly fictitious reunion of husbands and wives—fictitious because Odysseus was the only Ithacan who would eventually return from the war.15 The tales told by those imagined as returning include the battles themselves, and these returned soldiers “singing the Trojan fates” (Her. 1.28)16 recall Virgil’s own such tale in the mouth of Aeneas, treated in chapter 1.17 More importantly, Penelope’s report also suggests alternatives to the canonical, Homeric version. Ovid’s Penelope paints this reunion scene concisely, wistfully recalling the image of reunited families hearing war stories from returned soldiers: Mirantur iustique senes trepidaeque puellae, narrantis coniunx pendet ab ore viri. Iamque aliquis posita monstrat fera proelia mensa, pingit et exiguo Pergama tota mero. (Her. 1.29–32) Just old men and fearful girls are amazed; the wife hangs on the words of her husband as he tells the tale. And now someone indicates the fierce battles on a table placed at hand, and he draws all of Troy in a bit of wine. That Ovid’s Penelope imagines these soldiers as drawing the battles (31) and indeed all of Troy in a drop of wine (32) not only compresses an epic subject into the slighter confines of an elegiac frame but can also serve as a metaphor for how Ovid conveys the weight of the civil wars: that such a message must be compressed, hidden, and encoded in elegiac letters to be acceptable, or perhaps to be expressed at all. While writing in wine is of course a well-known elegiac activity, the crucial difference here is the thoroughly nonelegiac content.18 The tales of war Penelope mentions here are in stark contrast to what a reader should expect from elegiac poetry, which is

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usually not burdened by a weighty external context, as I argue this episode is. In Penelope’s telling, moreover, it is the wife who wins out (coniunx, 30), her status awarding her pride of place over either the epic elders (29) or the puellae (29) so common to elegy. Since this cannot be how Penelope has gotten her information about the events at Troy, this passage obliquely poses the question of how Penelope is getting her information and who can take credit or responsibility for it. Her admission that she has learned through the report of Nestor to Telemachus comes as no great surprise,19 yet how she sources her information raises the important question of who, according to Ovid’s Penelope, sent Telemachus to Pylos and Sparta in search of news. The question here is at first left open by a convenient passive construction with the agent unspecified:20 Omnia namque tuo senior te quarere misso / rettulerat nato Nestor, at ille mihi (Her. 1.37–8: For aged Nestor reported everything to your son, who was sent to inquire about you, and he reported everything to me). Telemachus reports Nestor’s news to his mother, but she does not inform Ulysses who actually sent him. In the Odyssey it is clearly Athena who has done so, but further along in Heroides 1, Penelope herself will claim the credit (Her. 1.63–65). Even then the way she characterizes her role in gathering information about her husband is not clear-cut. Her nos . . . misimus (63–64), followed by another misimus (65), may be either the royal “we” or one that includes Telemachus as part of the planning and execution. This may be an instance of Ovid’s careful characterization of Penelope as particularly well suited to her famously wily spouse, an element of Ovid’s development of “a cunning Penelope willing to stretch the truth” already on offer to him in the Odyssey,21 but it complicates the narrative of Penelope’s letter in ways similar to Ovid’s presentation of Dido. While it is possible that Ovid’s Penelope simply takes credit here that she does not deserve, it is equally possible that Penelope was always the author of this plan and that it was instead Homer who did not give her credit for it.22 Nor does Ovid stop here but turns the question around once again in Penelope’s assertion that Telemachus departed invitis omnibus (100). While it is clear in the Odyssey that the suitors did not want his mission to succeed, Penelope’s words here reopen the possibility that she did not want him to go either. The Odyssey provides support for both of these viewpoints, and Ovid’s back-and-forth here both reminds readers that is the case and encourages us to question the validity of each option.



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What Penelope claims Telemachus reports is also suspect. The tale of the murder of Rhesus and the Doloneia here gives the main action to Ulysses, as he is the one who dared to slaughter so many men, primarily by means of his characteristic craftiness: Retulit et ferro Rhesumque Dolonaque caesos, utque sit hic somno proditus, ille dolo. Ausus es, omnium nimiumque oblite tuorum, Thracia nocturno tangere castra dolo, totque simul mactare viros, adiutus ab uno! (Her. 1.39–43) He reported that Rhesus and Dolon had been killed, and how this one had been betrayed by sleep, that one by trickery. You dared, too forgetful of your entire family, to attack the Thracian camps with a nocturnal trick, and to slaughter so many men at the same time, assisted by one man! Commentators have struggled with these lines, diverging as they do from the Homeric version, which states that Diomedes was the chief actor. What repays closer attention in Heroides 1 is the emphasis in this passage on trickery, especially in the context of Penelope’s wiliness in the Odyssey. Further, the insistent, repeated use of dolus (40, 41) in association with Ulysses reminds us of his own most characteristic quality.23 Ovid’s Penelope—as she craftily changes the received version of the tale—illustrates his focus on her own possession of this trait in what may be a clue to readers that there is more to this letter than simple intertextual artistry.24 Careful readers will wonder whether Ovid here provides glimpses of the dynamic of revision and reframing his Penelope employs as a hint to them about what to look for, a kind of subtle training in the strategies of active reading they should follow.25 In this way, Penelope’s altered version of the Doloneia raises a question critical to our understanding of the Heroides as a whole: what requires a reader of Ovid to privilege Homer’s version?26 Why, for example, could the Ovidian Penelope’s version not be a more accurate, or at least an accurate report of what she was told? Scholars generally attribute this new interpretation of Homer’s story to Penelope, to the “parzialità del punto di vista di

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Penelope.”27 Yet it can equally well be the version that Nestor provides, crediting Odysseus with the role of bold killer and Diomedes as his assistant— an understandable boost to the reputation of a man long absent and presumed dead when reporting events to his grieving family. Or Telemachus may have altered the report himself. It may not be Penelope’s invention at all, and Ovid is careful to leave this open to interpretation, prodding his readers to question the truthfulness of his source material. Thus Heroides 1 acts in a similar fashion to Heroides 7 in its questioning of truth in reporting and the reliability of a given narrative. In the wider context of Ovid’s composition, such ambivalence over who sought news of the lost king may reflect larger questions about the role of the citizen in seeking agency and certainty about their roles and responsibility under a new regime. Ovid’s consistent return to questions of auctoritas and truthfulness specifically in relation to political leaders—the exiled Aeneas, queen Dido, regent Penelope, the young prince Telemachus—suggests that it is not a mere literary concern but that it is a fundamental issue for Ovid’s reimagining of his heroines. Contemporary Parallels The question of how Penelope obtained information about Ulysses encourages Ovid’s readers to consider—once again—the possibility that his heroines’ own versions of their stories provide valid alternatives to canonical presentations. Yet in Penelope’s letter Ovid’s textual engagement is not with his direct source text alone. In this section I argue that Ovid also anchors his text to poetry composed shortly before his own that has been long understood as undeniably politically engaged. Penelope’s lament in Heroides 1 that Troy’s destruction means nothing to her if she is as alone as when the city was standing (47–50) picks up on a concern introduced at the very start of the poem (4). Ovid’s return to this theme sets in motion a series of echoes of other poems about the costs of war that have not consistently been read closely in conjunction with Heroides 1. Penelope embarks on a brief reverie of Troy after the war at lines 52 and following that is disturbingly reminiscent of scenes of victorious civil war soldiers embarking on their cultivation of land allotments: Diruta sunt aliis, uni mihi Pergama restant, incola captivo quae bove victor arat.



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Iam seges est, ubi Troia fuit, resecandaque falce luxuriat Phrygio sanguine pinguis humus. Semisepulta virum curvis feriuntur aratris ossa, ruinosas occulit herba domos. (Her. 1.51–56) The citadel of Troy has been destroyed for other people; for me alone it remains, which a resident victor plows with his captive bull. Already there is a crop where Troy was, and the rich land, needing to be reaped with a sickle, grows luxuriant from Trojan blood. The half-buried bones of men are struck by the curved plows, grass conceals the collapsed homes. Penelope here imagines not so much the ruins of Troy, but rather those who have now been settled there, presenting us with an incola . . . victor (52), a conquering settler, who plows the land and makes it his own, with a bull that has been confiscated (52) from its presumably deceased owner. The harvest she sees denotes the passing of time but also emphasizes the violence that permitted it, as the land grows fertile from human blood (54). It is not rocks that the plows strike but the bones of men, emphasized by the enjambment of ossa, again half covered owing to the passing of time (55–56) but still a visible reminder of the war lurking just beneath the surface. Penelope’s focus is thus both on the dispossession of the dead and on the violence of war, with the grass-covered and crumbling homes (56) almost an afterthought. Neither of these ideas is present in Homer, where there is barely a thought for the vanquished. That perspective will not come until Virgil, who provides the Trojan side of the story—and we should note here, too, the emphasis on specifically Phrygian blood (54)—through the lens of the fleeing hero Aeneas. Although Penelope would not have had access to the content of Virgil’s tale, Ovid most certainly would, and the emphasis on the bloodshed of Trojans rather than Greeks (as we might expect from the wife of a Greek lord)28 may be a reminder of the link between Troy and Rome.29 Yet Trojan blood at the city’s end is closely linked to Roman blood through the city’s ancient founder, Aeneas. Rome’s connection with Troy through Aeneas had of course been recently explored in great detail by Virgil, in what is significantly considered the “Odyssey half ” of the Aeneid, the portion that recounts

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Aeneas’ wanderings from Troy to Alba Longa. This parallel to Ulysses’ own meanderings blends the two heroes, one Trojan, one Greek, and the literary past and contemporary present—the destruction of Troy, the founding of Rome, and Virgil’s retelling of the story during the aftermath of the civil wars—in ways that I hope to have shown in the last chapter are themselves open to serious question. Should this connection of Troy and Rome in Penelope’s letter itself seem too tenuous, Heroides 1 also alludes to another earlier work of Virgil available to Ovid, Eclogue 1, commonly taken to be a meditation on the land seizures at the close of the civil war.30 A similar sentiment to Penelope’s own at Heroides 1.51–56 is voiced by Meliboeus at Eclogue 1.70–73: impius haec tam culta novalia miles habebit, / barbarus has segetes. en quo discordia civis / produxit miseros: his nos consevimus agros! (“An impious soldier holds these so well-cultivated fields, a barbarian holds these crops. Ah! To what a point has discord led miserable citizens; for these men have we sowed our fields!”). The lines leading up to this excerpt emphasize how far Meliboeus will have to wander in his exile as an ousted landholder, much like the wanderers Aeneas or Ulysses, but his focus on his land (70) and the barbarian soldier (70–71) who will hold it is similar to Penelope’s in Heroides 1. That a rustic farmer removed from his lands should think in terms of its future owners is only natural, but for Penelope to think in such terms of land cultivation at Troy is incongruent at best. The change Ovid’s Penelope makes at lines 52 and following, then, has no precedent in Homer but significant precedent both in literature and political events contemporary to Ovid’s youth. It is precisely this literature, moreover, that reflects the tension of the transition from republic to principate, in which “the remembrance of the Republic is . . . the remembrance of its final agony.”31 That Virgil’s text refers specifically to civil strife may seem either to confirm the link or to disallow it entirely, as Ovid’s text has—on the surface—nothing whatsoever to do with civil conflict. This is precisely the point: Ovid, as so often in his poetry, walks a tightrope so carefully that it is impossible to dislodge him from one side or the other. Another Virgilian intertext has been noted here by Peter Knox, and it is one in which the connection with civil conflict is not merely allusive but stated outright. Knox sees in the incola . . . victor of line 52 an anachronistic reference to Roman colonization of foreign territories, citing an allusion to Georgics 1.491–7:32



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Nec fuit indignum superis bis sanguine nostro Emathiam et latos Haemi pinguescere campos. Scilicet et tempus veniet, cum finibus illis agricola incurvo terram molitus aratro exesa inveniet scabra robigine pila, aut gravibus rastris galeas pulsabit inanis grandiaque effossis mirabitur ossa sepulcris. (G. 1.491–97) Nor was it unworthy in the judgment of the gods above to twice enrich Emathia and the broad fields of Haemus with our blood. And indeed a time will come when, within those boundaries, a farmer having worked the earth with his curved plow will encounter spears eaten through by scabby rust, or he will strike empty helmets with a heavy hoe and be amazed at the great bones in the dug-up tombs. Here the poet describes the territory of Philippi (42) and Pharsalus (48). While Knox rightly identifies this allusion, his assessment of it from Penelope’s pen as “a pathetic exaggeration made plausible only because it comes from a disheartened spouse”33 misses an opportunity to look deeper. This is especially true when we consider that Phrygian blood (Her. 1.54) is here specifically “our blood” (sanguine nostro, G. 1.491, 501) and that this passage in the Georgics explicitly connects the distant past and contemporary warfare in its prayer that the iuvenis, clearly Octavian,34 be permitted by Rome’s gods to bring aid to the troubled world (everso . . . saeclo, 1.500):35 satis iam pridem sanguine nostro Laomedonteae luimus periuria Troiae; iam pridem nobis caeli te regia, Caesar, invidet atque hominum queritur curare triumphos, quippe ubi fas versum atque nefas: tot bella per orbem, tam multae scelerum facies, non ullus aratro dignus honos, squalent abductis arva colonis, et curvae rigidum falces conflantur in ensem. (G. 1.501–8) For a long time we have sufficiently paid for the lies of Laomedon at Troy with our blood; for a long time, Caesar, the realm of heaven grudges you

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to us and laments that you care for humans’ triumphs where indeed right and wrong have been confused: there are so many wars in the world, there are so many types of crimes, there is no worthy honor for the plow, our fields lie wasted with their farmers led away, and the curved pruning hooks are smelted into an unyielding sword. Rather than considering Ovid’s allusion in isolation, looking at the wider context hints that here Penelope’s words may be activating a more significant intertextual echo. The same focus on blood (491, again at 501), on war (505), on farming and its implements (506–8), and on wasted sacrifice is present. Heroides 1 thus calls to mind a specific critique of the civil wars that encourages us to view Penelope’s letter in a similar frame of reference. It is hard to believe that Ovid would not have considered the full context from which he was drawing, and if we consider in turn that Ovid’s Penelope— while overtly referring only to Troy—is calling to mind the Roman civil wars, we substantially enrich the interpretive possibilities for a woeful description that seems so odd for her imagined historical context but so appropriate for Ovid’s own. Yet another contemporary example supports this reading, that of Pro­ pertius 1.21, albeit more briefly and in a more general way. The address of “Gallus,”36 the soldier either breathing his last or, as seems more likely, already dead in 1.21, notes that his bones will be like those Penelope imagines near Troy as semisepulta (Her. 1.55); his will be scattered upon the Etruscan hillside (dispersa . . . ossa / montibus Etruscis, Prop. 1.21.9–10).37 This cluster of references to half-buried or scattered citizen-soldiers’ remains reinforces the possibility of an oblique critique in Heroides 1, a possibility again reinforced by a further allusion to Propertius’ next poem. In this case Propertius flags the civil war overtly,38 along with another connection to agricultural motifs present at both Georgics 1.506–8 and Heroides 1.52–54. Poem 1.22 provides this further parallel in its response to the interlocutor Tullus’ question about his origins: Qualis et unde genus, qui sint mihi, Tulle, Penates, quaeris pro nostra semper amicitia. Si Perusina tibi patriae sunt nota sepulcra, Italiae duris funera temporibus,



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cum Romana suos egit discordia cives (sed mihi praecipue, pulvis Etrusca, dolor: tu proiecta mei perpessa es membra propinqui, tu nullo miseri contegis ossa solo): proxima suppositos contingens Umbria campos me genuit terris fertilis uberibus. (Prop. 1.22.1–10) Tullus, you ask me on the basis of our constant friendship what sort I am, and from what family, and which Penates are mine. If the Perusine tombs of our fatherland are known to you, the funerals of Italy during difficult times when Roman discord drove on her own citizens (but for me especially, Etruscan dust, you are a source of pain: you have endured the sprawled limbs of my relative, you cover the bones of a pitiable man with no soil): Umbria, bordering closest upon the fields set under it, fertile in its rich fields, bore me. Here Propertius refers both to the tombs of Perugia (Perusina . . . sepulcra, 3) and the funerals of Italy during its difficult times (Italiae duris funera temporibus, 4), specified clearly as the civil wars in line 5: cum Romana suos egit discordia cives. Yet the limbs of Propertius’ relative (mei . . . propinqui, 7) and the bones as yet uncovered by the Etruscan soil (6–8) also match Penelope’s description of bones that are only half buried (Her. 1.55) and the blood-enriched fertility of Troy (Her. 1.53–54) is like that of Umbria itself in lines 9–10. Here the fertility is not ascribed to the blood of the dead, but the proximity of death and fertility in a poem that laments the costs of civil war is suggestive, especially in this constellation of references. Lawrence Richardson Jr. notes the aptness of this description for Perusia,39 while Barchiesi notes how inapt the very idea of plowing around Troy is, given its perch atop a steep stronghold.40 Perhaps, then, Ovid conflates the two locations, not accidentally but to elucidate his allusions to contemporary events, lending weight to the idea of Penelope as here accessing concerns very much on the mind of Ovid’s poetic peers and presumably their readers as well. To press the issue a bit further: each of these examples suggests as true for Rome what Ovid’s Penelope soon explicitly states would be true for her as well, that it would be utilius (67) for her for Troy still to be standing. It would

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have been better, that is, if the war were still ongoing; then Penelope would at least know where Ulysses was.41 Reading her words as a contemporary critique suggests that it would be better if Rome had not yielded to Octavian, given the price that peace has imposed on her citizens.42 Penelope’s anger here at her former vows (votis, 68) and her description of herself as levis (68) aligns with feelings of remorse regarding the new postwar order and would be an instance of stark contrast from Homer, where Penelope is anything but “fickle.” Further, Penelope’s pietas (85) both recalls Ovid’s own wife as later presented by Ovid in exile, discussed below, and strikes an odd note for a Greek heroine. The dissonance is striking, especially given the pride of place this key virtue had in the newly restored republic, restored precisely by the means critiqued by Ovid in the contemporary poems to which Ovid here alludes. Coniunx semper Ulixis Having established these parallels for contemporary resonances, Ovid returns to central themes of his poem such as the heroine’s identity in terms that seem similarly out of place for an elegiac heroine. Penelope’s insistence that coniunx semper Ulixis ero (84), while true from the Homeric perspective, has no place in elegy. This emphasis on status, and that it be recognized by those around her, is more appropriate to the insecurity of elite Romans at the dawn of the principate, unsure of their own status and their own role in this new political reality. An insistence on a socially sanctioned and significant, if feminized, role provides an interesting foil for elite males at sea in a new roman political milieu.43 Part of Penelope’s concern about retaining her status as Ulysses’ wife is, of course, the question of how long she can hold out against the predatory suitors who are using up her diminished resources, both financial and—oddly—physical: Turba runt in me luxuriosa proci, / inque tua regnant nullis prohibentibus aula; / viscera nostra, tuae dila­ cerantur opes (88–90: “The luxury-loving throng attacks me, and they lord it in your halls with no one preventing them; my innards, your wealth, is being torn apart”). Read in the light of contemporary references to the civil wars, the throng of suitors sounds ominously like citizens on the prowl for estates of the proscribed. The choice of viscera is especially odd in its physicality and pulls the reader up short, wondering just what Ovid is up to.



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What Palmer reads as a reference to Penelope’s son,44 and Jacobson as an intimation of sexual assault,45 Knox suggests is commonly “applied to the resources of a state . . . or of a household.”46 While the most immediately appropriate choice here for viscera is the last of these, the Oxford Latin Dictionary fleshes out further allegorical significance, defining viscus, usually in the plural as here, with a figurative or transferred meaning as “applied to the parts of something, [especially] a country or state, most essential for its survival.”47 Such an interpretation adds weight to a parallel between Penelope’s suitors and proscription hunters and between the decimation of Ulysses’ estate and the damaged republic. Without appropriate postwar male leadership, whether that of principled citizens or an enlightened prince, the (e)state is vulnerable and bound to suffer. Other possibilities for viscera present themselves, each more ambiguous than the last, which may be the more salient point than which specific meaning works best in this context. The option—again usually in the plural—of viscera as corresponding to the seat of the emotion or mind48 presents us with a Penelope who can hardly think through her struggle any longer. Understanding viscera as “entrails for sacrifice” on the other hand, offers a Penelope ready to consider her very body a sacrifice to her role as protector of her husband’s estate and her role as his wife.49 I may seem to belabor the point here, but this sort of moment of aporia, the amplification of an element present in Ovid’s source text—there is no doubt Penelope is overrun and near the end of her resources by the time we meet her in the Odyssey—but flagged in such an unusual way calls out to the reader for pause.50 That so many of the options fit suggests a multivalent interpretation is best, and it is one that vibrates between the pathos of the literary precedent for Ovid’s letter and that of the recent and turbulent past of the time in which he composes it. Changes from Homer that cohere with Ovid’s own postwar background continue in Penelope’s presentation of Telemachus as a youth in need of his father to guide him (107–8). In the Odyssey it is clear that Telemachus is at a point when he is outgrowing his need for a father figure, as he takes on active roles in the household both in speaking up to the suitors and traveling to Pylos to solicit information. Penelope’s emphasis here on his youth serves two purposes. The first is rhetorical in that it underscores the urgency for Ulysses’ return and hence the occasion of Penelope’s letter right now:

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Telemachus needs guidance to become a man and he needs it now, before it is too late. The second fits Ovid’s context as well as Penelope’s: Telemachus stands for a generation of young men who have lost their fathers, whether as a result of the Trojan War that is the literary backdrop for Penelope’s letter or the civil wars that are the actual backdrop for its composition. In this generational vacuum, guidance for attaining manhood is sorely lacking, a reality emphasized by Penelope’s meager list of supporters left on her side (97–98, 103–4). Penelope’s insistence throughout the letter that Ulysses should return pro­ tinus (116), immediately, in fact points out that such a return might already be too late. In the Odyssey Penelope clearly stands on the brink of being forced to marry one of the suitors: she is at a point of no return.51 For Ovid and his contemporaries, it may seem that they, too, are at a crisis point as Augustus solidifies his power. In the first decade BCE, it may still have felt possible to return to a Roman normal, but with a clear sense that time—a full two decades after the first and second Augustan settlements—was running out. What the next section will show is that a backward glance at this period from the perspective of Ovid’s exile—focused through the lens of Penelope—confirms that a return to normal was simply not possible, and perhaps never had been. Here I continue to read Ovid’s work allegorically, searching for hidden meanings activated in the texts by reading intertex­ tually across time. The greater the remove from the single letters’ time of composition, the greater the impact of the changes lived and observed by the poet—both in the republic itself and of course through his own exile. Whether or not Ovid’s response to these changes is intended—that is, whether or not the poems I examine are allegorical per se—is largely beside the point, although in the poems of exile greater explicitness supports an awareness on the part of the poet both of how his patria has evolved and how his poetry’s suggestiveness has itself kept pace with, and bears witness to, that evolution. Penelope from Exile While Penelope’s letter itself can suggest parallels with Ovid’s contemporary world, it is in his poetry of exile that Ovid makes explicit a connection between Penelope and his own concerns with the Augustan regime. This retrospective connection clarifies the underpinnings of the Heroides project



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in relation to the letters’ real-world time of composition. The Trojan cycle in general and Penelope in particular make repeated appearances in Ovid’s elegiac letters from exile.52 In Tristia 1.3 the poet describes his departure for exile, claiming that his household’s lamentation at his departure is just like Troy’s lament at its own capture: si licet exemplis in parvo grandibus uti, / haec facies Troiae, cum caperetur, erat (Tr. 1.3.25–6: “If it is permitted to use great examples for small things, this was the appearance of Troy when it was captured”).53 This process of comparing large things with small, the epic with the personal, resurfaces again and again throughout the Tristia, most often in comparison with Ovid’s own personal tragedy and its relation to the princeps Augustus and his wife Livia.54 This mode of analogy is helpful to a discussion of Heroides 1: here Ovid makes explicit the use of lofty literary examples for less lofty, real-world purposes, as I suggest he may be doing for Penelope, and indeed throughout the Heroides, with epic struggles paralleling contemporary trials of Ovid’s audience, reduced in scope and import to the trivial genre of elegy. What in the exile poetry revolves around the poet’s personal struggles, that is, looks back to broader concerns nascent in the Heroides.55 As opposed to poem 1.3, which Ovid uses to establish the comparison between his suffering and those of Trojan refugees,56 Tristia 1.6 engages specifically with Penelope’s letter to Ulysses. In it, the poet praises his wife as a paragon of womanly virtue, directly comparing her to classical heroines, including those of the Heroides. Much as Stephen Hinds sees Tristia 1.7 as “rewriting the Metamorphoses to make statements about his own exile,”57 I see Ovid using Tristia 1.6 and 5.14 in a similar fashion:58 rewriting Heroides 1 to comment on his own exile. The Tristia, that is, can reprogram our reading of the first, programmatic letter of Ovid’s Heroides collection in a way that orients it toward the politics of his own day and authorizes the type of reading I provide in the previous part of this chapter.59 Ovid’s own words encourage this approach, in that he uses the fall of Troy multiple times in the exile poetry as a parallel for his own exile from Rome and presents his wife as a modern day herois, encouraging external readers to draw similar connections between characters of the Homeric cycle and Ovid’s contemporary milieu.60 Tristia 1.6 makes explicit this connection between Ovid’s wife, mythological heroines, and contemporary politics in Ovid’s own words addressed to his wife:

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Ergo quam misero, tam vero teste probaris, hic aliquod pondus si modo testis habet. Nec probitate tua prior est aut Hectoris uxor, aut comes extincto Laodamia viro. Tu si Maeonium vatem sortita fuisses, Penelopes esset fama secunda tuae: prima locum sanctas heroidas inter haberes, prima bonis animi conspicerere tui. Sive tibi hoc debes, nullo pia facta magistro, cumque nova mores sunt tibi luce dati, femina seu princeps omnes tibi culta per annos te docet exemplum coniugis esse bonae, adsimilemque sui longa adsuetudine fecit, grandia si parvis adsimilare licet. Ei mihi, non magnas quod habent mea carmina vires, nostraque sunt meritis ora minora tuis! Siquid et in nobis vivi fuit ante vigoris, extinctum longis occidit omne malis! (Tr. 1.6.17–30)61 Therefore you are approved by a witness as miserable as he is truthful, if only this witness has any sort of authority. Nor is the wife of Hector first in comparison with your propriety, or Laudamia the companion of her dead husband. You, if you had been allotted Homer, Penelope would have been second to you in reputation: you would have held first place among the hallowed heroines, you would have been seen as first because of the good qualities of your spirit. Whether you owe this to yourself, made pious by no teacher, when morals were given to you at your birth, or if the female princeps, admired by you through all the years teaches you to be the example of a good wife, and has made you similar to herself through long habituation, if I may compare great things with small ones. Alas, my songs do not have great strength, and my lips are less able than your merits deserve. If there were once some vigorous strength in me, it has all been extinguished by my long sufferings! Here not only is Ovid’s unnamed wife compared with Andromache, Penelope, and Laudamia—two of them Homeric Heroides’ writers—but indeed



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with Livia herself.62 Moreover, Ovid once again uses the conceit of comparing small things with great, calling our attention both to the tentativeness of his proposal and of its overt interlacing of public and private in a distinctly political context, the context of Ovid’s lament from exile. As he does so, though, he insists on his own authority and truthfulness as a witness (vero teste, Tr. 1.6.17), even while undercutting his assertion in the very words of his own heroines: hic aliquod pondus si modo testis habet (Tr. 1.6.18) pointedly reflects Briseis’ own realization in letter 3 that her own words fall like tears, holding no weight for her audience (Her. 3.97, at mea pro nullo pon­ dere verba cadunt).63 Hinds argues convincingly for Tristia 1.6 as inserting Ovid’s wife into the tradition of catalogs of good women, suggesting that when read retrospectively in light of the focus on his wife in Tristia 5.14, the collection’s last poem, 1.6, itself could serve as a programmatic statement for the col­ lection as a whole as a model of new, spousal elegy. And yet Hinds notes that proposal does not go far enough, asserting that 1.6 does far more and indeed looks much further back in Ovid’s poetic career. Instead of looking back to the start of the Tristia alone, these poems insert the poet’s wife into the Heroides collection as a whole in his claim that primum locum sanc­ tas heroidas inter haberes (Tr. 1.6.33),64 if only she had the right bard to sing her praises. Here Homer serves as a foil for Ovid, not only in terms of the genre each practiced but also for Ovid’s current lack of poetic vires (Tr. 1.6.29).65 Had he the vigor of bygone days (Tr. 1.6.31), Ovid insists, he might still be capable of giving his wife the epic treatment she deserves.66 Even while Ovid claims this is not the case, though, he looks back to his own Penelope, the first of his literary heroines, echoing her own protestations of weakness, her own inability to fight off the rapacious suitors from her home at Heroides 1.109: nec mihi sunt vires inimicos pellere tectis. As Ovid laments his current lack of poetic vigor he looks back to a time when his powers were at their peak and does so by recalling his own literary creation’s lack of physical vigor. A strange parallelism inscribes the now powerless Ovid into his powerful poetic past, and specifically the time when he wrote of women entrapped by the literary tradition in an eternal powerless present. Ovid, that is, now experiences in exile much of what his heroines did in his earlier works,67 works which, even then, showed his awareness of their plight and its relevance to the world he himself inhabited. This is made all the more

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poignant and all the more apparent by his recognition and bald statement in Tristia 1.6 that his wife is foremost among these suffering heroines. Hinds further suggests that Ovid’s proposed enshrining of his wife into first place among the sacred heroines pushes Penelope into second place and that by doing so Ovid has again “‘rewritten’ part of his own pre-exile oeuvre in such a way as to enlarge the epistemological scope of the exile poem itself.”68 An important implication of such a rewriting of Ovid’s wife is that it would also retrospectively turn Ovid into the Homer his wife needed, with himself as the author both of his own source text for his wife’s story and his secondary69 text that puts her in line with the other rewritten heroines.70 Such a process in turn further justifies my reading of Ovid’s role in the Homeric Heroides as a sort of second Homer, or rather, a first Homer who is more authoritative than his own sources.71 Reconfiguring his own wife as the foremost heroine, that is, authorizes Ovid ahead of Homer: if Ovid’s wife is the programmatic heroine and is so placed because of broader sociopolitical unrest that came to a head for the couple in Augustus’ relegation of Ovid from Rome, Ovid himself is the author who rewrites his own versions of those heroines (from the future perspective of exile) as victims of a similar sort of political upheaval.72 This transplanting tactic enlarges the epistemological scope not only for the triggering poem Tristia 1.6 but also, and perhaps more importantly, for the Heroides themselves, especially when we consider the other, nonmythological woman to whom Ovid compared his wife in this poem, the femina . . . princeps (Tr. 1.6.25), Livia. The insertion of Rome’s first lady into this poem has been variously received, leading even a scholar as distinguished as E. J. Kenney to condemn it as “disastrous.”73 Hinds instead sees the inclusion of the “first woman” as a political necessity, a reminder that of course the actual femina princeps Livia outdoes the hypothetical prima heroidas inter, Ovid’s own wife.74 Here, then, “Ovid has acknowledged the disruptiveness of imperial panegyric” and indeed “embraced it.”75 I would go one step further to suggest that he has embraced it and used it to cast a shadow backward in time over his literary heroines, encouraging us to read them, too, in the shadow of the principate after a period of longa adsuetudine (Tr. 1.6.27). The effect of doing so is to consider the Heroides themselves as disruptive, as in need of corrective rewriting that adheres to a focus on family in the person of Ovid’s wife and recognizes a need to do obeisance to the imperial family in the person



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of the femina princeps Livia.76 Whether this is a desperate ploy in the hopes of booking a return trip to Rome, an attempt at apologizing for a previous misstep, or sincere admiration for Rome’s first lady is largely irrelevant.77 The allusive act and the train of thought it engenders, or at least makes possible, is what matters. The Epistulae Ex Ponto also provide important examples of how Ovid reuses the material from Heroides 1 in fashioning his own position as an exclusus amator of Rome. In epistle 1.4, Penelope’s situation in Heroides 1 helps Ovid describe his own difficult relationship with the princeps. Near the end of her letter, Penelope reminds Ulysses how vulnerable she is, as the list of those loyal to him and willing to resist the encroaching suitors is growing shorter. In fact, they are now only three in number, and they are ill-equipped for the task, being the unwarlike (inbelles, Her. 1.97) trio of a powerless wife (sine viribus uxor, Her. 1.97), Ulysses’ aged father Laertes, here called a senex (Her. 1.98), and child-son (puer, Her. 1.98) Telemachus—a list of survivors that fits both Penelope’s own Homeric Greece and the Roman post-civil-war context: women, old men, and children. It is not enough, though, for Penelope to remark on herself as widowed and weak; concerns about her appearance—more appropriate for the elegy in which she now finds herself than for an epic context—surface at the end of Heroides 1. Penelope’s final lament that certe ego quae fueram te discedente puella, / pro­ tinus ut venias, facta videbor anus (115–16: “Surely I, I who had been but a girl when you left—even if you come immediately—will seem to have become an old woman”) seems to appear again in Epistulae Ex Ponto 1.4. In this letter to his own wife in which he clearly flags Augustus as the cause of his woes, Ovid imagines his troubles as the cause of not only his but also his wife’s premature aging: Te quoque, quam iuvenem discedens Urbe reliqui, credibile est nostris insenuisse malis. O ego di faciant talem te cernere possim, caraque mutatis oscula ferre comis, amplectique meis corpus non pingue lacertis, et “gracile hoc fecit” dicere “cura mei” et narrare meos flenti flens ipse labores, sperato numquam conloquioque frui,

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turaque Caesaribus cum coniuge Caesare digna, dis veris, memori debita ferre manu. (Pont. 1.4.47–56)78 It is believable that you also, whom I left behind still young when departing Rome, have grown old as a result of my troubles. O, may the gods grant that I may see you so, and that I may bring dear kisses to your changed hair, and hold your withered body in my arms, and say, “Concern for me has made this body slim,” and tell my toils to you, weeping myself as you weep, and to enjoy a conversation never hoped for, and to bear with a mindful hand due incense to the Caesars and the worthy wife of Caesar, true gods. The parallels in this passage have been noted by commentators: Jan Felix Gaertner and Garth Tissol see clear evidence that Ovid, in Tissol’s words, “concludes the poem by describing to his wife an imaginary reunion with her on the model of Ulysses and Penelope.”79 Gaertner emphasizes the similarity of this imagined reunion at 49–54 to that of Penelope and Odysseus in the Odyssey, complete with weeping, embraces, and kisses,80 while Martin Helzle sees a precise connection between these two texts, citing Heroides 1.115–16 as a direct influence.81 While the idea is fitting in elegy, Ovid spells out clearly the connection with Penelope, Ulysses, and the imperial family in ways that illuminate Heroides 1 as a potential site of contemporary criticism. The imagined reunion Ovid presents here confirms what we know about the spousal reunion in the Odyssey, especially that Odysseus’ desire for Penelope is not diminished by the effect of the years on her beauty, but is jarring indeed in the elegiac context. While in epic Penelope’s allure is not harmed by the passing of time, in elegy, as Hunter Gardner has shown, this is seldom, if ever, the case.82 The desire for return—Odysseus to Penelope, Ovid to his wife—is enough to overturn the norms of this very specific genre and to remind us that Heroides 1, like Ovid’s poetry of exile, requires a different approach than elegy’s more traditional corpus. However we choose to understand these references and their dynamic engagement with the single Heroides, in Ovid’s poetry of exile his use of Penelope and Ulysses is no longer ambiguous, as it was in the much earlier Heroides 1. Ovid’s Penelope-esque wife’s abandonment is due to Augustus, and it is only with his godlike permission that Ovid can imagine this reunion’s



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occurrence.83 Their separation and its concomitant troubles are the result of Augustus’ strict control over citizen behavior. Given that this is where we as modern readers know Ovid is headed, at the single letters’ time of composition these concerns may also be latent beneath the surface of Penelope’s lament as Ovid imagines it in Heroides 1 and those of other letters as well. The Heroides, in this reading, may thus be a space for Ovid to examine at a seemingly safe distance84 some of the early disadvantages of peace at the price that Rome has paid. The focus on these disadvantages continues in Heroides 3, the letter from Briseis to Achilles, in which the war captive examines her loss of status, the options that remain to her in seeking security and stability, and the consequences of both of these questions on her sense of identity. It is to this letter that I now turn in chapter 3.

chapter 3

Real Poetry Imaginary and Symbolic Dissonance in Heroides 3 Elegy’s central metaphor of servitium amoris functions as a political metaphor that has particular relevance in an Augustan context. The way in which Rome’s aristocracy is figured as being seduced by a princeps into a state of servitium is thus allegorized in elegy’s imagery of a servility fashioned out of an activity that was similarly supposed to be peripheral and strictly subordinate to the traditional needs of engagement in negotium. —Fear (2000), 237

T

h e prev i ou s chap t er examined how Ovid’s recasting of the Odyssey’s Penelope employs allusions to Virgil and Propertius to create space for a reading of her letter as potential commentary on post-civil-war Italy, and how Ovid’s own exile poetry retrospectively encourages such a reading. Here I turn to Ovid’s captive heroine of the Iliad with a theoretical rather than solely intertextual approach but to the same end, namely examining how Briseis’ letter, too, may be expressive of anxie­ ties felt by Ovid’s contemporaries in the new age of Augustus. Analysis of Briseis’ letter to Achilles, Heroides 3, has so far focused on Ovid’s psychological realism in his depiction of a distraught war captive,1 on the poet’s perverse wit,2 on the elegiac exploitation of a suitably lamentable erotic episode in Homer’s epic,3 or Briseis’ attempt to rewrite herself into a central role in the Iliad.4 What has not received sufficient attention is the crushing weight of epic that pervades the poem, especially in terms of how Ovid negotiates the grimness of Briseis’ situation as a literal slave. His heroine must operate within two generic codes, those of epic and elegy, neither of which quite fits. Briseis’ discomfort reflects the inability of her experience in literature to provide her with a means to operate as a unified, coherent 62



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subject.5 I suggest here that this discomfort may reflect a similar disquiet cloaked in elegy’s well-known trope of the servitium amoris to that felt by Ovid’s contemporaries. In this chapter I take my invitation from the excessively tragic or epic elements Ovid makes protrude from the generic horizon of elegiac expectations to interrogate what they tell us about the situation of this elegiac captive and how the conditions under which Ovid himself writes may engender such a focus.6 These grave protrusions are evident chiefly in moments of marked change from Ovid’s source text, and close analysis of such moments illustrates their reflection of similarly “schizoid discourse”7 under the evolving system of the principate. These moments, much like Penelope’s vivid and incongruous use of viscera (Her. 1.190), ask the reader to pause and consider their significance more seriously than has previously been done. I do not aim to psychoanalyze Ovid’s imagined author but rather to examine the tension between her point of origin in Homeric epic and her current role in Ovid’s epistolary elegy, considering how her imagined experience reflects that of Ovid and his peers under the principate, a world in which questions of status and externally defined roles become paramount.8 Briseis’ entrapment between epic and elegy, that is, may be emblematic of the experience of Ovid and his contemporaries, suspended between the gravitas of their republican roles and their diminished importance in the principate. Ovid’s focus in letter 3 on public disgrace, Briseis’ inability to identify herself in her new position now that she is subject to a dominus (Her. 3.5, 100, 127, 154), and resentment of her place in that context may— as with Penelope’s letter as presented in the previous chapter—reflect conflicting emotions about the bargain Romans struck to end the civil wars, by which they obtained a disempowered and unstable personal and political identity in exchange for a stable government.9 The first person voice of Heroides 3, the pathos of the letter, and the “strenuous hesitancy” and “tentative urgency”10 that imbue Briseis’ letter all conspire to draw the reader in and urge him or her to identify with the speaker. This identification, however, is not comfortable: to identify with Briseis is to be powerless before one equipped with ius domini (154). When one considers the effect on Ovid’s contemporary readers, this is all the more true, with the new servitium of the Augustan regime as a subtle but compelling subtext, as the epigraph to this chapter suggests. Servitium in Heroides 3, that is, may not be merely a

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literary trope but also a space for Ovid to explore the seduction and its consequences of his fellow citizens by their new master. Mistaken Identity The groundbreaking work of Micaela Janan11 and Paul Allen Miller12 is especially significant in informing my approach in this chapter and helping to show how Ovid’s fictional female letter writer can reveal the tensions acting on the male author of the Heroides. Miller’s discussion of how the profound changes during the period of elegy’s flourishing and decline gave rise to the divided, conflicted, disempowering, and often self-undermining speakers of elegy places important emphasis on the historical context of this short-lived genre. In particular, Miller’s use of a “Lacanian framework may help us to appreciate, perhaps, why the feminine voice and subject position is appropriated with such regularity by the male poets of Latin Love elegy, and why this too is a symptom of the crisis in subjectivity brought about by the collapse of the Roman Republic.”13 The “why” is only a starting point, however, and what that appropriation of a female voice may indicate is the disempowerment of male Roman subjects in the new political landscape.14 Miller does not include the Heroides in his discussion, as they are usually omitted from discussions of elegy in general and of the political slant of elegy, although they clearly are a part of the elegiac floruit at the end of the first century BCE; I aim to show here that they, too, are an important indicator of the times as reflected in contemporary poetry. Using the Lacanian idea of capitonnage,15 or quilting, and how moments of excess can expose shifts in the Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real, I hope to show that what Ovid’s Briseis suffers may be symptomatic of Ovid’s own time of composition, a time characterized by an expanding experience of subjection under the new system of Augustus. There are several aspects of Lacan’s teachings that are productive in relation to the Heroides, and my use of these requires brief clarification. First, Briseis is a conflicted subject who oscillates between powerlessness and a sense that she is entitled to better treatment. This conflict meshes startlingly well with Lacan’s theories of identification and the Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real.16 Briseis throughout her letter attempts to arrive at a stable selfimage, an Imaginary identification that signifies how she views herself within her cultural context. Given her rapidly changed and changing fortunes, it is



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unsurprising that her search for such an identity is unsatisfying, and indeed nearly impossible. The Symbolic order, that of law, custom, and society—the realm within which each individual constructs his or her Imaginary selfidentification—is itself conflicted in Briseis’ letter, as the realms of epic and of elegy may each be seen as constituting their own version of the Symbolic.17 The Symbolic code of epic is of course Briseis’ Homeric point of origin, and one in which as a literal captive she would have no influence. Yet the Symbolic of elegy, the genre into which Ovid transcribes her experience, should figure her as a domina rather than serva, or captive, prize of war. Given that this is the literary register in which Briseis herself is presented as composing, her attempt to craft an Imaginary identification appropriate to the Symbolic of elegy is not surprising. Indeed, the Imaginary as the way a subject identifies him- or herself within the realm of the Symbolic— often running counter to one’s broader Symbolic identification18—is well expressed through elegy, long acknowledged as positioning its speakers in a subversive, countercultural stance.19 In concert with these two registers is the inarticulable, undefinable Real, which may be loosely thought of as the real, or actual circumstances that underpin all human identification and interaction.20 Shifts or changes in this Real inevitably cause corresponding shifts in the codes of the Symbolic, which may or may not be matched by corresponding shifts in the Imaginary. Briseis, as a former princess turned war captive, is profoundly affected by the changes in the Real of Homeric epic, which necessitate changes for her Symbolic value—she who was once a patriae pars . . . magna (Her. 3.46) is now no more than the γέρας she is throughout Homer’s Iliad. Lacan called the mode of attempting such self-identification capitonnage, or quilting, by which subjects attempt to identify themselves with stable categories or points de capiton that consist in such “culturally freighted signifiers” as man, woman, wife, lover, statesman, and so on.21 Briseis fails in her attempt at capiton­ nage, as none of the categories with which she tries to align herself quite fit. Neither the Symbolic of elegy nor that of epic fits her actual circumstances. She is at an impasse in her incapability to carve out a stable or coherent Imaginary identity within the Symbolic(s) in which she finds herself.22 This failure on Ovid’s part to provide Briseis with a secure identity can be read as a reflection of the dilemma within the newfound Symbolic of the Augustan age, based as it was on profound changes in the Roman Real in the

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decades preceding and accompanying the beginning of Ovid’s life.23 Like Briseis, Ovid and his peers have found themselves reduced from a patriae pars . . . magna (Her. 3.46) to subjects of a “restored republic” that was a republic largely in name only.24 Briseis’ attempts at identifying her place in a new and unfamiliar sociopolitical setting may reflect a loss of Romans’ sense of self at the dawn of the empire and thus a similar struggle on the part of its citizens. Miller has argued convincingly “that the changes taking place in the Roman Real that led to the collapse of the republic created a crisis in the Symbolic that also led to the emergence of the subject position we recognize as that of the erotic elegists.”25 In this reading I aim to show that the opposite side of this coin can also shed important light on our understanding of this period and of the Heroides collection’s engagement with it. If changes in the Roman Real are reflected in the elegiac speaker’s unique voice, the unique voices of Ovid’s often puzzling heroines can reflect or express these changes as well.26 It has long been noted that Ovid makes changes in his presentation of Briseis,27 but how the changes he makes resonate with the tensions that accompanied and followed Octavian’s rise to power has not been considered. That the principate was by now well established should not be taken to mean that the ripples of societal change and their impact on male privilege in particular had ceased to be felt. Offloading the experience of subjection onto the female and the female body within the safe confines of poetic discourse may point to a need to alleviate the anxieties of a Roman intellectual elite at a time of significant disruption.28 The prime way that Ovid’s depiction of Briseis embodies a potential relocation of “real” distress is to filter the heroine’s captivity through elegy’s servitium trope using a darker lens than readers of elegy are used to.29 Ovid’s redeployment of this trope has engendered strong, even impassioned, reactions,30 but none that consider the potential implications of servitium used in this letter, in this way, at this time. As Trevor Fear has noted, servitium in the period of elegy’s floruit is a distressingly apt parallel for the excess of otium provided by the “exclusion from active politics” that accompanied the end of the republic and rise of the principate.31 The allegory that he proposes in the epigraph to this chapter posits elite Roman males—like Ovid—as in semiservitude to Augustus. Fear further specifies that servitium amoris is “a pointed allegory of the Augustan settlement and its potential effect on Rome’s elite (and particularly those



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male members of the elite who were passing across the liminal threshold of adulthood as the establishment of the principate was in process).”32 This allegory is especially poignant when we consider that Ovid himself would have been at precisely this liminal point, from the ages of sixteen to twenty, during the settlements of 27 and 23 BCE. It becomes all the more so when we consider the implications posed by a Briseis figure, taken on by Ovid in a ventriloquized voice and expressive of similarly unexpected (by her, at least) servitude. In addition, Heroides 3 is bleaker than the elegiac norm in its depiction of the relationship between serva and dominus in that, unlike other elegies that feature Briseis,33 Achilles does not in fact love her,34 and as a result she is willing to compromise however she can to ensure that her life will not once again be overturned.35 As Briseis attempts to create a secure self-image in relation to her addressee, she resigns herself to the downward slide through a variety of socially recognized categories into which she attempts to quilt her identity, from promised wife (nupta, Her. 3.69) and mistress (domina, Her. 3.101) to exconcubine (nostra fuit, Her. 3.80), to slave (captiva, Her. 3.60; famula, Her. 3.75; serva, Her. 3.100), to prize (munus, Her. 3.20; Her. 3.149), and even to mere baggage (sarcina, Her. 3.68).36 The Imaginary, for Briseis, is not Lacan’s well-known “armor of an alienating identity” that protects her from an uncomfortable reality; it does not provide her with “a way of avoiding [her] own fragility and helplessness” but leaves her alienated all the same, and without even the recompense of a comfortable self-delusion.37 What Ovid’s elegy gives Briseis is the capacity to investigate and understand her precarious and valueless status within the Symbolic system(s)—discussed below chiefly in terms of genre—she inhabits. What it gives us as modern readers is an opportunity to consider how this type of investigation is grounded, and finds fertile soil, in Ovid’s contemporary world of unexpected elite servitude to an aloof and powerful master. To illustrate Briseis’ changing self-identification, I shall focus on two key episodes, interwoven through this chapter in the order in which Briseis’ letter alludes to them: Ovid’s manipulations of Homer’s account of the embassy and his recasting of Briseis’ lament for Patroclus. Throughout the analysis of these two examples runs the central theme of Heroides 3, which is Briseis’ sense of powerlessness in relation to Achilles and concern about how to create a secure future for herself. These themes are especially evident when

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Ovid clearly cites Homer overtly and closely and yet changes or adds important details and transposes significant parts of Briseis’ story that emphasize this sense of powerlessness, tragedy, or the failure of what she sees as her bargain with Achilles—a bargain that she, as a war captive and unlike elite Romans, had no opportunity to make. I further suggest that these instances of excess may be rooted in feelings of powerlessness and insufficient compensation in the bargain Rome’s citizens struck with Augustus, their selfstyled savior and restorer of their greatly altered libertas. Homeric and Ovidian Pretexts Such parallels, of course, may be critiqued as evident only in the eye of the beholder, and yet Ovid’s letter 3 itself not only bears out but perhaps even hints at such a reading. Ovid’s choice of Briseis, and especially her lament for Patroclus, provides a clue for an attentive reader familiar with Ovid’s allusive games. In Homer, we are clearly told that the death of Patroclus is a pretext for Briseis to bemoan her miserable fate. In Homer, we are also told that Briseis is not inherently valuable or important, but that instead her value is almost entirely symbolic: Homer’s Briseis symbolizes Achilles’ status, his honor, and the respect his fellow Greeks have for him. I suggest that Ovid takes the idea of a pretext (πρόφασιν, Il. 19.302) as his inspiration for his lament via Briseis, and that his Briseis, too, is a symbol. The lament produced by Ovid is for destroyed homes, scattered and deceased families, and for a republic that no longer exists: what Briseis of Heroides 3 symbolizes is Ovid’s own peers, those who have lived through the civil wars and have come at last to realize their true value under the evolving Augustan regime. In the postrepublican context, they are markers of what used to be valued, free, and indeed the patriae pars . . . magna noted earlier.38 It is in this spirit that I read the letter, taking cues from the pretext in Ovid’s Homeric source and how Ovid redeploys that pretext in ways resonant with his own milieu. Voice and Value Briseis’ letter is set just after the embassy to Achilles in Iliad 9, with the hero’s imminent departure lending urgency to her plea that Achilles accept her back from Agamemnon and not leave her behind.39 The letter is thus imagined as being written at a crucial time in her literary history. For Briseis the point of the letter is that her situation—like Penelope’s—has not passed a



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point of no return but is still on the brink; a positive resolution is to a certain extent still possible but must happen immediately or the opportunity will be lost. The very opening of the letter points, however, to the impossibility of Briseis’ project: Quam legis a rapta Briseide littera venit, vix bene barbarica Graeca notata manu. Quascumque aspicies, lacrimae fecere lituras: sed tamen hae lacrimae pondere vocis habent. Si mihi pauca queri de te dominoque viroque fas est, de domino pauca viroque querar. (Her. 3.1–6) The letter you are reading comes from stolen Briseis, and is Greek hardly well written by a barbarian hand. The blots you see were made by my tears; but nevertheless these tears possess the weight of speech. If it is proper for me to complain about you, both my master and my husband, then I will complain a little about my master and my husband. Briseis’ insistence on her voicelessness immediately undercuts her ability to communicate with her victor/dominus: she makes it very clear to Achilles that she does not have the language to speak (1–6) and does not know how to communicate in this new situation in which she has no power and knows it. She hopes that the tear marks (lituras, 3) on her letter will compensate for her tentative use of Greek by having the “power of speech” (pondera vocis, 3–4) that she lacks. The opening of Heroides 3 also makes it immediately clear that Briseis’ identity is not that of a usual elegiac puella.40 She refers to Achilles, her addressee, as her dominus (5) and submissively asks permission to complain about his behavior, even as she identifies the elegiac theme of querela. She fully realizes that she is dependent on Achilles’ good will even to lodge a complaint (si . . . fas est, 5–6). The choice of fas here is particularly telling; especially when read through an Augustan lens, it carries the weight of reduced liberty, not only to act but also to speak.41 Throughout the letter Briseis attempts to renegotiate her position, accepting the reality of her situation but making it clear that she had greater aspirations. The insecurity of her actual position and total lack of authority pervade the letter as a sustained concern, one at which the Iliad—where she speaks only

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once—barely hints. Ovid’s addition of this focus in Heroides 3 highlights not only Briseis’ plight but also her awareness of it. Briseis’ awareness of her vulnerable and unstable position is in the fore also in her report of the embassy to Achilles, specifically her retelling of the long list of gifts Agamemnon offers—along with her return—in order to persuade Achilles to rescue her and to keep up his end of what she perceives as their bargain. In it she closely copies the list at Iliad 9.128–47, yet there are significant changes, as Briseis’ own list filters Agamemnon’s offer that is grounded in the Symbolic of epic so as to make it less competitive with her own perceived enticements within the realm of elegy. In Briseis’ version of the corresponding passage, she faithfully reports the list of drinking vessels, horses, et cetera, adding that Agamemnon offers: quodque supervacuum est, forma praestante puellae lesbides, eversa corpora capta domo, cumque tot his (sed non opus est tibi coniuge) coniunx ex Agamemnoniis una puella tribus. Sic tibi ab Atreide pretio redimenda fuissem: quare dare debueras, accipere illa negas? (Her. 3.35–40) that which is quite superfluous, girls from Lesbos of outstanding beauty, bodies captured from an uprooted home, and with these so many women (but you don’t need a wife) a wife, a girl from among the three daughters of Agamemnon. In this way I ought to have been ransomed by you from the son of Atreus for a price: why do you refuse to accept what you ought to have given? On the one hand, Briseis seems compelled to report the original story— the Homeric account42—but changes it to her perceived advantage. She notes, for example, that the offer of “girls from Lesbos” is “quite superfluous” (supervacuum, 35) but neglects to inform him of how many Agamemnon offers.43 These exceptionally beautiful girls are unnecessary because Achilles already has a puella, an elegiac girlfriend, in Briseis herself.44 In her elegiac reference to the girls from Lesbos, she focuses on their appearance: they are of noteworthy beauty. In Homer, however, they are women—



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γυναῖκας—rather than elegiac puellae and are first characterized by their ability to produce objects of value (ἀμύμονα ἔργα ἰδυίας, Il. 9.128; Il. 270).45 That they are women who “conquer the races of women in beauty” (αἳ κάλλει ἐνίκων φῦλα γυναικῶν, Il. 9.130) is a secondary attraction, whereas Briseis’ version frames them only as a threat in that they rival her in beauty: from her elegiac perspective, their economic or “real” value is unimportant. Yet the way Briseis further characterizes these women is also relevant to her own negotiation with female, subject identity. She assimilates these captive women to her own experience in that they, like her, are simply corpora capta (“captured bodies,” Her. 3.36) wrested from homes destroyed by Achilles.46 Thus even gifts of significant value represent Briseis’ identity crisis in an unstable situation, as she attempts to craft an active role in bargaining for her security even while pointing out her true powerlessness. Ovid’s treatment of Briseis’ lament over Patroclus further undermines her Imaginary identification as an important figure who may sway Achilles. Ovid encourages his reader to consider Briseis’ vulnerable position by transforming her lament for Patroclus into a lament solely for herself.47 His précis of Briseis’ history repays close comparison with Homer’s presentation of it in Iliad 19. There, when Briseis returns to Achilles’ camp and discovers that Patroclus is dead, she beats her breast, tears at her face in mourning, and speaks for the only time in the Iliad. She laments for him as follows: “. . . ὥς μοι δέχεται κακὸν ἐκ κακοῦ αἰεί. ἄνδρα μὲν ᾧ ἔδοσάν με πατὴρ καὶ πότνια μήτηρ εἶδον πρὸ πτόλιος δεδαϊγμένον ὀξέϊ χαλκῷ, τρεῖς τε κασιγνήτους, τούς μοι μία γείνατο μήτηρ, κηδείους, οἳ πάντες ὀλέθριον ἦμαρ ἐπέσπον. οὐδὲ μὲν οὐδέ μ᾽ ἔασκες, ὅτ᾽ ἄνδρ᾽ ἐμὸν ὠκὺς Ἀχιλλεὺς ἔκτεινεν, πέρσεν δὲ πόλιν θείοιο Μύνητος, κλαίειν, ἀλλά μ᾽ ἔφασκες Ἀχιλλῆος θείοιο κουριδίην ἄλοχον θήσειν, ἄξειν τ᾽ ἐνὶ νηυσὶν ἐς Φθίην, δαίσειν δὲ γάμον μετὰ Μυρμιδόνεσσι. τώ σ᾽, ἄμοτον κλαίω τεθνηότα μείλιχον αἰεί.” ὣς ἔφατο κλαίουσ᾽, ἐπὶ δὲ στενάχοντο γυναῖκες, Πάτροκλον πρόφασιν, σφῶν δ᾽ αὐτῶν κήδε᾽ ἑκάστη. (Il. 19.290–300)

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“Thus evil upon evil comes to me always. For I saw the husband to whom my father and revered mother gave me pierced through with sharp bronze before our city; and I saw my three dear brothers, whom one mother bore along with me, all fall on a destructive day. No, you did not permit me to weep when swift Achilles killed my husband and sacked the city of godlike Mynes, but you said that you would make me the legitimate wife of godlike Achilles, that you would take me to Phthia in the ships, that you would give me a wedding among the Myrmidons. For this reason I mourn you incessantly now that you have died, you who were always kind.” So she spoke, wailing, and the women groaned with Patroclus as their pretext, but each for her own sorrows. The situation described here in Homer is already bleak enough: Briseis has seen her home and family destroyed by Achilles, the very person upon whom she is now dependent. The way Ovid reuses many elements of this lament shows that he recognized the possibility that her Homeric lament is self-focused as well.48 Homer tells us that Patroculus’ death is a pretext, a πρόφασιν (Il. 19.302), for her to lament the now-removed prospect of her salvation through marriage to Achilles. Ovid takes this one step further, however, by removing Patroclus entirely. The only remnant of Patroclus is his reported promise at Il. 19.297–98—in Ovid transposed to Achilles—that he would work to secure Briseis’ marriage to Achilles, a promise that he would find her security as a socially sanctioned spouse in an impossibly delicate and unsettled situation. That her lament in Ovid does not even mention Patroclus recognizes and amplifies the πρόφασιν already present in Homer. The changed emphasis is a reminder that Heroides 3 focuses on Briseis’ own experience, and it is here that her conflicting self-identifications—is she a mistress of elegy? a heroine of epic?—begin to align, providing her only with the painful realization that she has no agency at all in her own salvation. At the same time, Ovid builds on this pretext to refashion a lament that coheres remarkably well with contemporary experience in post-civil-war Rome. Briseis’ recollection of the destruction of her home in Ovid is as follows: An miseros tristis fortuna tenaciter urget, nec venit inceptis mollior hora malis?



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Diruta Marte tuo Lyrnesia moenia vidi, et fueram patriae pars ego magna meae: vidi consortes pariter generisque necisque tres cecidisse,—tribus, quae mihi, mater erat— vidi, quantus erat, fusum tellure cruenta pectora iactantem sanguinolenta virum. Tot tamen amissis te compensavimus unum; tu dominus, tu vir, tu mihi frater eras. Tu mihi, iuratus per numina matris aquosae, utile dicebas ipse fuisse capi. (Her. 3.43–54) Does grim fortune endlessly press upon the miserable, and does no softer hour come once troubles have begun? I saw the walls of Lyrnessus destroyed by your warfare, and I had been an important part of my homeland. I saw three companions fall, alike in both birth and death— for which three, and for me, there was one mother. I saw—how great he was!—my husband on the gory ground, heaving his bloody chest. With so many lost, I compensated with you alone. You were my master, my husband, my brother. You said to me yourself, swearing by the divine power of your watery mother, that it had been “useful” for me to be captured. Even as Ovid removes Patroclus from his own version, he still follows closely the focus of Briseis’ Homeric lament on her own tragic losses at Il. 9.291–97. It is precisely this aspect of her lament—Briseis’ more personal losses—that Ovid’s letter investigates at lines 43–54, compressing ten books of the Iliad into Briseis’ attempt to escape the grim fate that presses upon her by means of a mollior hora (“a softer hour,” 44).49 Such an escape attempts to realign Briseis with an elegiac frame of reference through its characterization of time with one of elegy’s key words.50 But Ovid’s elegizing treatment does not ensure this victim of epic reality a “softer” or easier fate, and the bleakness of her letter suggests that such hopes remain in vain. She cannot fit in both epic and elegy, and consequently she fits in neither. The choice of mol­ lis, moreover, points not only to Briseis’ current genre but that of the elegists as a whole, and thus to the choice its practitioners made to write in a seemingly frivolous genre. As Miller has argued, elegy’s brief floruit at a time of

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intense change gave rise to split subjects as its speakers, who were themselves expressions in literature of a misalignment of new and old Symbolic systems.51 Briseis’ futile search for escape via a mollior hora may also be read as the similarly futile attempt at escape through literature of the Augustan elegists, especially as they positioned their compositions as not epic and thus antiwar.52 Here, then, we see another instance of what Trevor Fear has argued for the servitium amoris, in this case embodied in the slave Briseis through her situation’s potential parallel with the new Augustan servitude: the otium of elegy becomes a substitute for the negotium of both military and political activity.53 Just as for Briseis, however, the elegiac expression of their experience did not provide relief but rather embodied the changed and changing Real in which they wrote, in which their role was increasingly circumscribed to one of semi-servitude. In both Homer and Ovid’s accounts, Briseis has seen the destroyed walls (diruta . . . moenia, 45) of her homeland Lyrnessus, but Ovid’s passage emphasizes Achilles’ responsibility for it; the walls were destroyed Marte tuo (45).54 Briseis’ brothers’ deaths feature in both laments, but in Ovid’s an assertion of their humanity accompanies the description of their demise: they were “companions” (consortes, 47), both of birth and of death. His Briseis does not merely see her husband “pierced through with sharp bronze” (ἄνδρα . . . / εἶδον πρὸ πτόλιος δεδαϊγμένον ὀξέϊ χαλκῷ, Il 9.292), but also his bloody chest heaving as he labors on the ground: fusum tellure cruenta / pectora iactantem sanguinolenta virum (49–50). Ovid’s Briseis also places the blame firmly on Achilles, here her addressee and not simply a thirdparty referent: Briseis acknowledges Achilles as the agent of her homeland’s destruction (Marte tuo, 45) and the murderer of her family. Alessandro Barchiesi reads the repetition vidi . . . vidi . . . vidi (45–49) as marking pathos of her recollection while also intensifying the experience of Homer’s Briseis, who reports what she witnessed with a single εἶδον (Il. 19.292).55 Ovid’s Briseis resents the loss both of her family and of her status as a “large part” (pars magna, 46) of her patria.56 The points of change in this refashioning of Homer are explicit descriptions of what happened in the epic realm rather than the euphemisms we might expect from elegy.57 The losses are personal, deep, and visceral, and parallel—in striking fashion—the trauma of civil war inflicted on Ovid’s own generation, pointing to one individual as responsible both for the initial destruction and now for continuing safety.



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A Hard Bargain While of course Ovid may simply be exposing the realities the Homeric text elides, the emphasis on accountability may also have significant resonances for Ovid’s contemporary audience. Loss of family, loss of political importance, and the necessity of living with one of the parties responsible—namely Augustus—either as a better bargain than continuing to fight or as the only remaining option seems a compelling possible subtext. This is brought to the fore in another Ovidian elaboration. Whereas Homer’s Briseis simply states that Achilles killed her family, Ovid’s looks to Achilles for compen­ sation (tot tamen amissis te compensavimus unum, 51). Scholars have noted the similarity of this passage to Andromache’s farewell to Hector at the Scaean gates in Iliad 6, and yet the man Andromache replaces her family with is not the man who killed them.58 Briseis instead has only the person responsible for her plight to help get her out of it. With so many lost, Briseis compensated with Achilles, and she did so precisely because—or was willing to hope for the best precisely because—her victor promised it would be to her advantage, or worth her trouble, or at the very least serviceable (utile, 54) to have arrived at her current state of servitude. A similar fate awaited Rome’s surviving citizens after the civil wars: like Briseis, the only place they could look was to the victor. Just as her captor himself, the murderer of her family and the very man responsible for her predicament, is the one responsible for her safety, Romans are now left only in the hands of Augustus, similarly responsible—directly or indirectly—for the deaths of many of his citizens’ loved ones. The reality, or Reality, of this situation cannot have been wholly comfortable.59 The tense Ovid employs in Briseis’ description of Achilles as her sub­ stitute family—tu dominus, tu vir, tu mihi frater eras (52)—is significant in that the imperfect implies continuous action in the past, and that such action has ended: Achilles was once all men to her, but this is no longer the case. In Heroides 3, Briseis is thoroughly disillusioned. She has learned in the course of her translation from the Homeric to the Augustan age that her captor is not her savior. Despite what she claims to have been led to expect by Achilles—“you said it was to my advantage (utile) for me to be captured” (54)—from her current perspective she sees no benefit at all.60 If we are to take the possibility of Heroides 3 as a commentary on citizen status at the

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time of Ovid’s composition at all seriously, the implications for his veiled message are hard to ignore: the bargain Rome struck with Octavian has not lived up to its promise in the eyes, at least, of some. Briseis’ more desperate negotiations for a stable identity now begin as she realizes there is no choice but to follow along, that there is no achievable alternative for her other than to seek Achilles’ mercy. She begs him to take her with him, conceding that her original plan of marriage is not realistic, that “I shall follow my victor as a captive, not my husband as a bride” (victorem captiva sequar, non nupta maritum, Her. 3.69). Briseis, as a captive who no longer attempts to gain higher status, now admits that she herself is not digna (Her. 3.73) of the role of coniunx (Her. 3.72): someone else from Achilles’ own social circle—and indeed her own original rank—will be.61 Briseis’ anxiety about her status and identity in relation to Achilles remains foremost in her concern about how Achilles and his wife, uxor (Her. 3.77) here, will treat her: “Do not allow my hair to be torn in public and say lightly ‘this woman was also mine’” (neve meos coram scindi patiare capillos / et leviter dicas “haec quoque nostra fuit,” Her. 3.79–80). Even here Ovid’s Briseis wishes to retain at least some of the dignity appropriate to her prior station; she does not wish to be shamed publicly, coram, nor treated as a mere possession.62 The inclusion of coram points to a possible contemporary anxiety at the core of Roman masculine identity (Imaginary or otherwise) in the public realm of the Roman Symbolic: public humiliation may have been a daily risk for elite Roman males in the new regime, where terms such as libertas no longer had the meaning they once did.63 This plea may express a hope among Ovid’s contemporaries that Augustus keep up the charade and at least not make public the extent to which the republic has changed. The juxtaposition of this concern about public debasement and Briseis’ insistence on being thought of by Achilles as “his” (Her. 3.80) highlights this vulnerability and leads to an important additional implication for Briseis’ experience and those of Ovid’s readers: public shaming will be acceptable, as long as it includes minimal safety: “it is acceptable to endure, so long as I am not left behind, scorned” (patiare licet, dum ne contempta relinquar, Her. 3.81). Perhaps the bargain struck is in fact worth preserving, given the alternative, namely the complete exclusion from Rome and the benefits it still offers to Ovid and his contemporaries. Ovid, in hindsight, will come to know this better than most.64



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Split Perspectives From the reality of her lost status, Briseis returns to another element of the Iliad’s embassy. The famous story of Meleager and Kleopatra (Il. 9.529 ff.), told by Phoenix to Achilles as a cautionary tale, resurfaces with a very different focus. In his reuse of the story, Ovid calls attention to his use of an intertext, having Briseis identify the Meleager story as one she knows (res audita mihi, Her. 3.93) and one known also to Achilles (nota est tibi, Her. 3.93). As with the information Penelope shares with Ulysses in letter one, it is unclear how Briseis knows this story.65 Ovid here implies Briseis was present at the Homeric embassy, ready to be returned to Achilles immediately upon its successful completion, but the lack of certainty reminds us that as with the letters of Dido and Penelope, readers may question the perspective and narrative authority of both the heroine and her sources. In Homer the story as told by Phoenix to Achilles is a reinforcement of the epic Symbolic, an example of how Achilles should not behave in the epic context,66 while Briseis presents the tale rather as an example of how Achilles should act: from her perspective in the elegy she attempts to cling to, despite her admission that she is closer to inanimate baggage, he should yield to his “wife.”67 While Phoenix’s point is that Meleager agreed to fight only after losing the chance to gain great gifts (Il. 9.601–5), Briseis’ is that “his wife alone changed her husband’s mind” (sola virum coniunx flexit, Her. 3.97). Immediately, though, the failure of Briseis’ Imaginary identification intrudes, and she acknowledges that her attempt at persuading Achilles by means of this story is bound to fail; she is no wife to him and cannot expect the same results:68 . . . Felicior illa! At mea pro nullo pondere verba cadunt. Nec tamen indignor; nec me pro coniuge gessi saepius in domini serva vocata torum. Me quaedam, memini, dominam captiva vocabat: “servitio” dixi “nominis addis onus.” (Her. 3.97–102) . . . She was more fortunate! But my words fall with no weight. All the same, I do not act above my station; and I have not behaved as if I were

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your wife, quite frequently summoned as a slave woman to my master’s bed. A certain captive woman, as I remember, called me mistress; I said, “You add the burden of that title to my servitude.” Where Phoenix expects to succeed because of his emphasis on material goods and the honor they represent, Briseis is fully aware that, as a mere captive, she cannot have the same influence as a wife: her position within the Symbolic of epic has no weight, just like her words (97–98).69 Unlike her tears at the poem’s opening, which Briseis hopes will speak for her, she now acknowledges that even her words, which “fall”—cadunt (98)—like tears, can have no effect. Ovid uses the Meleager story to return the focus yet again to the central theme of Heroides 3: the unequal status of wife and slave. As if aware she has gone too far with her use of the Meleager story, Briseis immediately acknowledges that her relationship with Achilles is that of servant (serva, Her. 3.100) and master (dominus, Her. 3.100), not of wife (coniunx, Her. 3.99) and husband, and that her behavior has acknowledged it: “I have not behaved as if I were your wife,” she writes, “however often I was called as a slave woman to my master’s bed” (Her. 3.99–100). Briseis also insists upon making her role clear to the other captives who she claims saw her as having a privileged position, telling Achilles that “a certain captive woman, as I remember, called me ‘mistress’ (domina); I said ‘you add the burden of that title to my servitude’” (Her. 3.101–2). Here, with the title of “mistress,” Ovid pointedly reminds us that this is precisely Briseis’ appropriate identification in accordance with elegiac convention, while at the same time reminding us that this is not a place where Briseis truly belongs.70 Agamemnon’s famous oath (Il. 9.132–34) that he has not had intercourse with Briseis also features but is now transposed and applied to Briseis: in Ovid’s version she swears that she has not had sex with Agamemnon (Her. 3.109–10). Agamemnon’s oath, in the Homeric context, is an acknowledgment that he has not violated Achilles’ property rights. For Briseis, in the elegiac context, the oath is a confirmation of her romantic fidelity and an attempt to establish her identity within the elegiac framework. She has been faithful to her dominus; he, too, should honor their commitment. Yet even the mention of the oath calls attention to its pointlessness: as a powerless



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captive, Briseis could not possibly have been in control of whether or not she had intercourse with Agamemnon.71 The oath has a very real and powerful point in Ovid’s letter, however, and is a significant stage in Briseis’ failed capitonnage as she once again attempts to quilt herself into the elegiac text as a character with at least some degree of volition and bargaining power. Verducci notes in particular the incongruity of her oath, as the list of what she swears by includes everything Achilles has destroyed and that was dear to her:72 the bones of her husband (Her. 3.103), her brothers’ souls, and her past union with Achilles (Her. 3.107) all feature. She offers her oath when none is asked mainly as a pretext to remind Achilles of what she has suffered (Her. 3.111–12). At such points the reader is reminded that Briseis is decidedly not a typical elegiac puella who can make demands of her amator. For readers alert to the oath’s incongruity and open to the possibility that Ovid’s more unexpected refashionings of his source texts may respond to his own historical period, the oath has an additional resonance in the unprecedented means Octavian used to ensure the allegiance of his supporters.73 When Octavian sought to secure his position as the legitimate leader of Italy prior to the final conflict with Antony and Cleopatra at Actium, he did so by means of an oath of loyalty to himself, a measure that, like many of the innovations of his principate, radically changed a legitimate existing institution. What Augustus in his Res Gestae presented as an oath sworn by all of Italy sua sponte, though, Josiah Osgood convincingly shows to have been a good deal “less voluntary than Augustus made it out to be at the end of his life”; Octavian instead relied on intimidation, bribery, and threats for compliance.74 Those who swore did not include only soldiers declaring loyalty to their dux for the duration of a crisis,75 but, as far as we can tell, all citizen males with very limited exceptions.76 Those who swore, that is, would have been Ovid’s older peers.77 It is impossible to assess what, if any, impact this oath would have had on Rome’s elite, and reference, however veiled, to an oath more than two decades in the past may seem quite unlikely. Yet the issue of an oath resurfaces precisely in the period of composition of the single Heroides with the oaths sworn—in very similar terms to the oath of 32 BCE, as Osgood argues—to Gaius, Lucius, and Agrippa Postumus, the adopted sons and grandson of Augustus, respectively.78 Such recent events of significance to Rome, events which signaled that allegiance was required not to

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the republic but to specific members of Augustus’ family,79 make an alarming backdrop for Briseis’ unnecessary, unsolicited, and pitiful assertion that she remains loyal to her captor. To return more closely to Heroides 3 itself, Briseis’ oath comes in the context of her attempt to fashion an identity appropriate for elegy not only for herself but also for Achilles by rewriting his behavior during the embassy. When Phoenix, Ajax, and Odysseus arrive at Achilles’ tent for the embassy, they find the hero playing the lyre and singing songs (Il. 9.186–89). Yet the specifics of Homer’s description relate the tranquil scene to its origins in the military arena. The instrument he plays is a prize seized from his sacking of the city of Eëtion, emphasizing his attachment to ἔναρα (Il. 9.188). Homer further emphasizes this aspect of Achilles’ character by the content of the hero’s song: the κλέα ἀνδρῶν (Il. 9.189) he sings are equivalent to the Iliad itself, an account of the “glorious deeds of men.” Although Achilles is not actively engaged in warfare, he remains steeped in it and its Symbolic values. Ovid’s Briseis’ frustration is with his previous affinity pro tutis insignia facta (Her. 3.121, “for famous deeds instead of safe ones”) and sweet gloria obtained in war (Her. 3.122). She asks him pointedly, “Did you only approve fierce wars while you were capturing me, and with my fatherland your praise lies conquered?” (an tantum, dum me caperes, fera bella probabas, / cumque mea patria laus tua victa iacet?, Her. 3.123–24). The implication is that if he now refuses to fight and to increase his glory, her family will have died in vain. Briseis looks back on her destroyed home and her dead family and wishes for their death at least to have had some meaning: a victor who renounces war so easily is hard for her to stomach. Especially during this age of the Pax Augusta, emphatically marked by the dedication of the Ara Pacis in 9 BCE, roughly contemporary with the composition of the Heroides, Briseis’ question is difficult to ignore. What, a reader might ask, is wrong with the Augustan peace? An answer may be found in responses ranging from the pre-Augustan Cicero to the post-Augustan Tacitus, as documented by Trevor Fear: “The internal stability provided by the Pax Augusta was at the price . . . of the ability of the senatorial elite to participate as effectively as it was used to in politics.”80 He further sees the popularity of elegy as indicating “a willingness on the part of a Roman population wearied by constant civil war and disruption to be seduced, . . . even if such an affair . . . promised to be potentially masochistic.”81 In Briseis’ despair at



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her combined losses is a recognition of such masochism. Aware that she has let herself be falsely persuaded that all would be well, she begs Achilles at last to kill her if he is tired of her (taedia nostri, Her. 3.139); through death, she may at least rejoin her brothers and her husband (Her. 3.143). The mode of death she requests is significant, too, as it literally “reinscribes penetra­ bility” into her text:82 she begs Achilles to run her through with his sword, asserting that she, too, has blood in her veins. She, too, is human after all— sentient, regretful, and desperate. Even death would be better than the current state of affairs. What Ovid creates in Heroides 3 through his Briseis is a disturbing narrative that at one and the same time flirts with the lightness of elegy while confirming the bleakness of the speaker’s epic situation in Homer. In this process, the gaps opened up by the disjunction of Briseis’ conflicting selfidentifications allow a glimpse into the trauma of her experience and, perhaps, even a glimpse into the trauma undergone by Roman society in Ovid’s lifetime. Barchiesi long ago noted that the Heroides are narratives that fill gaps and open windows into the existing mythographic tradition,83 but it is precisely into these gaps we must look further rather than taking it for granted that Ovid is simply a poet at play. When we do take this next step, we see the Heroides as paraquels that operate on multiple levels.84 Letter 3, in its focus on dispossession, voicelessness, and lack of freedom, casts a shadow across Ovid, his readers, and their experience in the new principate, not only on a fictitious captive from Homer. Thus, as we read Heroides 3’s desperate presentation of Briseis, we read not only in the shadow of the literary tradition and the outcome we know is a foregone conclusion for its heroine but also in the shadow of the historical tradition and the outcome we know awaits the letter’s real author as well as its imagined one. It is this idea that I propose to explore in the next chapter, in which I examine the implications of Heroides 5 and its generic competition for Ovid as the author of both carmen et error.

chapter 4

Interlude Time, Place, and Exile in Heroides 5 The Heroides may be read as letters from exile, epistulae ex exilio in which Ovid pursues his fascination with the genre of letters and the subject of abandonment through literary characters; the Tristia take that fascination one step further as the author himself, in letters to loved ones, writes from the position of an abandoned hero of sorts. —Rosenmeyer (1997), 29

I

n th e quot e that heads this chapter, Patricia Rosenmeyer refers spe cifically to the double-letter Heroides.1 Yet Oenone’s letter is the linch pin between the single and double letters in its connection between Oenone, Paris, and Helen2 and the turning point in this study’s examination of the single letters—those of Dido, Penelope, and Briseis thus far—to the opening pair of the double-letter collection, the correspondence between Paris and Helen. Oenone’s letter, the only one that looks ahead to the paired correspondence most likely composed in Ovid’s exile period,3 begs to be read both pro- and retrospectively. Oenone’s letter looks ahead both to the narrative events its author, Ovid, and audiences both ancient and modern know are an inevitable part of literary history—the Trojan war—and to the not-yet-written-by-Ovid correspondence of Paris and Helen. Modern audiences have an additional layer of backward-looking perspective, though, in that we know the external, nonliterary history that also awaits Ovid himself. We know how the principate will evolve in the time between the composition of the single and double letters and that Ovid’s exile is to come as a result of Augustus’ tightening of control. We also know that exile will color all aspects of the poet’s life and that such (dis)coloration will imbue his subsequent poetic output with nostalgic retrospection that aims for a return to an irretrievable status quo. In Heroides 5, abandonment and exile are central 82

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themes that arise in a variety of ways that I hope here to illuminate. In doing so, I aim also to show how Oenone’s letter foreshadows the poet’s own exilic sense of abandonment in a game of “ironic prefiguration” heretofore rec­ ognized for the Heroides only on the literary plane.4 Read in this way, the letter nudges the collection’s cautionary themes of authority, perspective, and identity discussed in the previous chapters from the literary and macropolitical worlds into Ovid’s own life as well.5 In this chapter, an interlude that transitions from the single to double letters, I touch on these themes while also addressing the importance of time, space, and gender in terms of Heroides 5’s imagined author, Oenone, and Ovid’s Tristia alike.6 In the reading I present of Heroides 5, I draw in particular on three approaches to the Heroides and to elegy more broadly that emphasize the importance of time, space, and gender. Genevieve Liveley reads the Heroides as offering paraquels, or “side shoots from the established time lines and the established narratives of canonical tales” that present alternative narratives, or what she calls “‘What if?’ stories” in the form of a letter bounded, or frozen, in narrative time.7 In reading Heroides 5 as its own “what if ” story, we can see more clearly the alternative path Oenone proposes to Paris—a return to a shared life with her—and the futility of that proposal at the same time. So, too, M. Catherine Bolton’s view of the Heroides as emblematic of gendered space plays an important role in my reading of Oenone’s “displacement”8 insomuch as the nymph is trapped at her point of origin on Mount Ida and Ovid is eventually relegated to Tomis, with no real hope of return. Like Oenone, who cannot follow Paris into epic, Ovid will be trapped alone in elegiac exile, with all appeals to Augustus for reinstatement in vain. Finally, I employ Hunter Gardner’s temporal reading of gender in elegy, which figures the genre’s females as confined to a specific point in time, while their male counterparts are free to move on to other phases of life.9 Oenone’s position as a space-, time-, and genre-bound observer in Heroides 5 parallels Ovid’s future static fixity in exile, when he will no longer have the usual male mobility here enjoyed by Paris and by elegy’s male speakers. He will, for the purposes of Gardner’s reading, and in line with Rosenmeyer’s epigraph, be unmanned by exile.10 In this chapter I investigate how Oenone’s letter interacts with the larger story of Paris and Helen’s elopement in ways that underscore the nymph’s role as a marginal character; how mobility, both literal and generic, are

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entwined in her futile attempt to win back Paris to the elegiac genre and pastoral setting in which she writes; and how her entrapment in time and place contrast with Paris’ ability to move on to the epic future readers of Oenone’s letter know awaits the young prince. As Paris moves toward epic, Oenone is left behind in the pastoral world, unable either to act or write herself out of her isolation. At the same time, this kind of reading can enrich our understanding of the letter as a forward-looking side shadow to the poet’s own experience.11 So, too, Ovid’s exile poetry casts him as a powerless and thus marginal character in his own drama. His inability to capitalize on his generic adaptability amplifies the hopelessness of his exiled status, and his own lack of mobility underscores the longing he still feels for the city of Rome. Thus, as with my treatment of Penelope, I propose a link between the Heroides and the exile poetry, one that here assimilates the experience of Oenone and Ovid in their shared inability to heal their own wounds with their own artes.12 Genre is again a significant factor as an important aspect of Oenone’s marginalization. Oenone, like Briseis in the previous chapter, is a bystander to epic, looking on as her husband advances from their pastoral past to an epic future.13 In this she fulfills a common role, as “the tropes of feminine viewing are often situated at the edges of epic, with close links to other genres, particularly tragedy and elegy.”14 Oenone’s isolation, though, is not merely generic but is spatial as well; Paris moves on to Troy while she remains alone in Ida. Her situation in this letter thus prepares us for Ovid’s feminized “abandoned hero” stance in exile,15 when he, too, is both poetically and geographically marginalized, gazing back at Rome much as Oenone gazes ahead toward Troy. In the poetry of exile Ovid, too, is marginalized both by his physical relegation16 and by his unheeded assertions that his maturation into epic is what truly ought to characterize him—as opposed to the elegy that proved so problematic. Heroides 5’s overlap with Ovid’s laments in exile, I suggest, constitutes coincidences of time, place, isolation, and abandonment that highlight the changes in store for both the real and imagined authors of the letter. In this chapter I will thus make the case that Oenone’s current situation has important parallels to that of Ovid in the future: exile, the failure to transcend genre, and finally victimization by Apollo. It is in the treatment of the Apollo episode in particular—long a

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source of confusion for scholars of the Heroides—that I argue for a more concrete link between Ovid and his heroine. That Oenone’s letter depicts a shared past with Paris much more pastoral than elegiac is clear.17 Oenone’s depiction establishes her long history with Paris and thus her priority over Helen in the hope that their longstanding relationship will persuade him not to abandon her. Among the pastoral touches are Paris’ inscriptions of his love for Oenone on the trees of Ida, themselves reinforcing the rootedness of Oenone’s references. Even the evidence she provides in her favor is geographically limited, though, which may lead an attentive reader to suspect its irrelevance to the newly recognized prince and his epic ambitions for the future.18 Oenone’s attempt to position herself as an appropriate epic consort is apparent in how she expects her “name,” inscribed by Paris on the tree (Her. 5.22) to grow over time: Et quantum trunci, tantum mea nomina crescunt: / crescite et in titulos surgite recta meos! (Her. 5.23–24, However much these trunks grow, so much does my reputation. Grow, and rise up straight into my honorary titles!). Ironically, this very inscription emphasizes an important point of incompatibility between Oenone and Paris: only she, as an immortal, would live long enough to witness these changes, as Paris would be long dead before the letters became noticeably distorted. In this way, Oenone, as a goddess, fits the usual relative course of time for elegiac females as Gardner sees it: Paris is in linear, masculine, teleological time, while Oenone, though immortal, remains trapped in a feminine time warp.19 Ovid’s choice of the word titulos (26), often associated with funeral monuments, reinforces this interpre­ tation,20 and at the same time recalls contemporary Roman concerns with reputation. The terminology Ovid has the nymph choose—or Paris, as the inscription’s original author—illustrates that she views her position as Paris’ spouse as an honor to be shared publicly: as the trunk grows, she hopes her reputation, nomina (25), and honors, titulos (26), will as well.21 The epic concern with reputation and fame thus takes pride of place even in Oenone’s current interpretation of this bucolic-elegiac love inscription. A separate tree preserves a second, more extensive inscription by Paris, here explicitly constructed as a carmen he has written as an author of elegiac verse. His couplet, however, looks ahead to the epic conflict external readers know is to come, and for which Paris is the prime instigator:

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“Cum Paris Oenone poterit spirare relicta, ad fontem Xanthi versa recurret aqua.” Xanthe, retro propera, versaeque recurrite lymphae: sustinet Oenonen deseruisse Paris. (Her. 5.29–32) “When Paris will be able to keep breathing even though Oenone has been abandoned, the waters of the Xanthus will flow upstream to their source.” Xanthus, hurry back, and run back, you reversed waters: Paris can bear to have deserted Oenone! Jacqueline Fabre-Serris has rightly noted that Paris’ carmen inserts the heroicepic world into this pastoral-elegiac setting.22 The implication is that even in his happy youth with Oenone, Paris was thinking in grander terms, while Oenone remained in the elegiac dark about any such ambitions.23 Here, then, inscribed in his oath of fidelity to Oenone, Paris anticipates the epic future that awaits him even while framing it as a romantic adynaton. Only now, at the sight of Helen perched in Paris’ lap (70) does Oenone become aware of his epic plans and call on the river to reverse its course. All the while, the contrast in their gender and generic mobility is emblematized by a flowing river that is nonetheless itself a concrete, immovable marker much like the inscribed trees of the couple’s shared home on Ida.24 In Oenone and Paris’ disparate recollections of Paris’ role as arbiter for­ mae (Her. 16.69), too, there were hints of his move to epic. For Oenone, at least from her current vantage point, the day was one of fateful and negative portents: Illa dies fatum miserae mihi dixit, ab illa pessima mutati coepit amoris hiemps, qua Venus et Iuno sumptisque decentior armis venit in arbitrium nuda Minerva tuum. Attoniti micuere sinus, gelidusque cucurrit, ut mihi narrasti, dura per ossa tremor. (Her. 5.33–38) That day foretold my death to wretched me; from that dreadful day began the storm of changed love, that day on which Venus and Juno, and Minerva, who would have been more properly attired in armor,

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came naked to your judgment. My astonished heart quaked, and a cold shiver ran through my bones as you told me the story. The event is marked as both unusual and significant from the start of Oenone’s account, as dies is feminine as opposed to its usual masculine gender,25 and is personified as the spokesperson of her downfall. The day itself announced (dixit, 33) her fate to her (32), appropriately modified as miserable or pitiful (miserae, 33). It is also at this point that epic pointedly intrudes on their relationship, embodied in the goddesses Venus, Juno, and Minerva at the judgment (arbitrium . . . tuum, 36). Oenone is appropriately awestruck (37) at Paris’ telling, complete with an icy shiver (gelidus . . . tremor 37–38). Paris, who is isolated in his role of distanced narrator in his own clause (ut mihi narrasti, 38), is pointedly in control of the tale he tells and consequently how he tells it. With no witnesses to corroborate or contest his version of events, Paris—like Aeneas when he recounts his escape from Troy to Dido— can craft his story however he likes.26 Indeed, Oenone indicates that she had doubts from the outset and that she went out of her way to consult the appropriate authorities: consului (neque enim modice terrebar) anusque / longaevosque senes: constitit esse nefas (39–40). Oenone’s careful construction here indicates that she is now all too aware that the prince may have been modulating his story for specific audiences, as mihi (38) clearly implies that he may have been telling the story to others as well. Her insistence, moreover, on respected and impartial observers’ interpretation of the Judgment as a bad omen (40) further calls into question Paris’ own rosy view of the episode.27 Oenone’s description of the Judgment is thus also important in its reintroduction of the theme of narrative reliability that is present throughout the Heroides.28 Paris’ own version of the Judgment as told to Helen in letter 16 shows that Oenone was right to be suspicious. While in her own letter Paris seems to have presented epic as thrust upon him—Juno, Venus, and Minerva simply showed up (35–36)—by the time he writes to Helen his story has changed.29 There instead he emphasizes that he was already on the brink of epic, even while looking on Troy from a distance: Est locus in mediis nemorosae vallibus Idae devius et piceis ilicibusque frequens,

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qui nec ovis placidae nec amantis saxa capellae nec patulo tardae carpitur ore bovis; hinc ego Dardaniae muros excelsaque tecta et freta prospiciens arbore nixus eram: ecce, pedum pulsu visa est mihi terra moveri . . . . . . Tresque simul divae, Venus et cum Pallade Iuno, graminibus teneros inposuere pedes. Obstupui, gelidusque comas erexerat horror; cum mihi “pone metum!” nuntius ales ait: “Arbiter es formae: certamina siste dearum, vincere quae forma digna sit una duas!” (Her. 16.53–59; 65–70) There is a place deep in the valleys of well-wooded Ida, out of the way and dense with pine and ilex trees, which is not grazed by the placid sheep nor by rock-loving she-goats nor by the wide mouth of the shambling cow. Here I was leaning on a tree looking toward the walls of Troy and its lofty roofs and the sea: suddenly, the earth seemed to me to be stirred by footsteps. . . . Three goddesses at once pressed their delicate feet on the grass, Venus and Juno together with Pallas. I was struck dumb, and a chill shudder made my hair stand on end when the winged messenger said to me: “Lay aside your fear! You are the judge of beauty: settle the strife of the goddesses as to which deserves to conquer the other two in beauty!” The lines that introduce the Judgment itself are important for several reasons, especially in relation to Heroides 5.30 First, while Paris here exhibits clear knowledge of the pastoral life, he is careful to downplay those elements of the setting even while acknowledging its isolation. The spot he describes is in the middle of valleys (53), out of the way (devius, 54) even in shaded Mount Ida (nemorosa, 55), and devoid even of animal life (55–56). This is in sharp contrast to the expansive view he insists held him rapt: the line that describes his view stretches out from his vantage point (hinc) all the way to the famous walls and lofty roofs of the city of Troy in the distance (57). Even as an outsider Paris was already looking ahead, prospiciens (58),

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to an urban setting, and beyond to the seas (freta, 58) that will in fact carry him to Helen and away from Oenone.31 While this is clearly the city of Troy, Fabre-Serris sees Homer’s city as a stand-in for Rome,32 a suggestive parallel for Ovid himself in exile. In fact, this scene is rife with poignant parallels, with Paris gazing longingly toward the city from which he is excluded, Oenone gazing longingly at Paris as he returns with Helen at letter 5’s opening, and Ovid himself looking back upon Rome, as he frequently does in the poetry of exile.33 A critical difference between the perspectives of Ovid and Oenone and that of Paris is worth underscoring here: the real and imagined authors of Heroides 5 look back with nostalgia, while their addressee—Paris—looks only ahead to the future. There are crucial differences, of course, and not merely those between the literary and the real worlds. Paris is isolated, but temporarily so, while Oenone’s exclusion will be permanent, as will Ovid’s. Even as Paris is perched alone atop a tree (arbore nixus, 58), he has a generic and geographic mobility Oenone does not. He can look elsewhere and move forward toward an alternate future, while she cannot, no matter how much the desire impels her to do so (et mihi per fluctus impetus ire fuit, 64). Indeed, Paris’ movement is implied even here, as his tree-top overlook is described as a place of departure (hinc, 57), which leads the reader’s eye over the walls of Troy and on to the sea (freta, 58). Oenone, unlike her more generically mobile counterpart, has no escape. While Ovid in turn—at the time of Heroides 5’s composition—is like Paris in that he, too, will move on to epic, it is only to be trapped later, like Oenone, in elegiac exile. The reality and consequences of this situation are clearly evident to the poet himself: Ovid’s references to his Metamorphoses as evidence of his poetic and civic bona fides abound in the Tristia,34 as do references to the changed fortunes of the poet himself in exile.35 In these and other passages, Ovid consistently asserts that his epic poetry ought to be the focus of Augustus’ interest. We, on the other hand, know that he will instead be condemned to elegy, as opposed to rewarded for his epic contributions. As McGowan puts it, “A verbal rejoinder in elegiac verse was destined to fall on deaf ears in Augustan Rome,”36 regardless of the poet’s past accomplishments. The same can surely be said of Oenone’s elegiac failure to win back a Paris bent on his epic future. Both real and imagined author choose the wrong genre, at the wrong time, for the wrong audience.

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That Paris has indeed abandoned Oenone for the new turpis amica (Her. 5.70) who clings to his lap triggers Oenone’s own recognition that she has been displaced and is not relevant even in her own elegiac tale. Instead that tale is now revealed for what it consistently is for Ovid’s heroines throughout the Heroides collection—a trap of both place and time: Votis ergo meis, alii rediture, redisti? Ei mihi, pro dira paelice blanda fui! Adspicit immensum moles nativa profundum (mons fuit), aequoreis illa resistit aquis; hinc ego vela tuae cognovi prima carinae et mihi per fluctus impetus ire fuit. Dum moror, in summa fulsit mihi purpura prora. Pertimui: cultus non erat ille tuus. Fit propior terrasque cita ratis attigit aura: femineas vidi corde tremente genas. Non satis id fuerat—quid enim furiosa morabar?— haerebat gremio turpis amica tuo! (Her. 5.59–70) So have you returned because of my prayers, you who are about to return as another woman’s man? Alas for me! I was persuasive on behalf of a horrid concubine! A native cliff overlooks the immense depths (it was a mountain); it stands against the flowing waters. From here I was the first to recognize the sails of your ship and the desire came upon me to go through the waves. While I linger, at the foremost prow regal purple flashed out at me. I was terrified: that was not your way of dressing. The boat comes closer and touches land with the swift breeze. While my heart trembled I saw a woman’s cheeks. Even that wasn’t enough—why indeed did I delay in my fury?—that vile girlfriend was sticking to your lap! Oenone’s description of her vantage point illustrates her separation from the action she observes; she is frozen here in both time and space as she, immobile, can only watch Paris’ return from Sparta with his new love. Oenone, that is, fulfills a role all too familiar for elegiac females, as Gardner aptly encapsulates it; as “a puella relicta [she] endlessly awaits an upwardly mobile,

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if ideologically conflicted, young man.”37 Oenone’s pose atop Ida emphasizes her lack of mobility within the scene she witnesses and her inability to keep pace with Paris and his destructive epic ambitions. As Bolton notes, “Paris, through the medium of the sea, comes and goes at will, Oenone does not”;38 like many of Ovid’s heroines, Oenone is left an observer on the margins who can do nothing but watch and bemoan her fate, an eerie parallel for the poet himself in the period of exile. The overhang (moles, 61), described as specific to the place (nativa, 61), looks down upon a vast sea from which it is separated by height and distance (61–62). For Oenone, moreover, the sea is not simply Paris’ collection of waves (freta, Her. 16.58) that separate him from Troy, but an immense depth (immensum . . . profundum, 61) that makes the space between herself and Paris seem impossibly forbidding. Her description here is more like Ovid’s own in the exile poems, where the dangers of the sea are abundantly apparent, especially in his description of his own perilous voyage from Rome to Tomis in Tristia 1.2 and 1.4. In that case, Ovid, the feminized exile, is forced to undertake travel he sees as profoundly destructive to him, just as Bolton posits such movement is for the imagined writers of the Heroides.39 The unnecessary specification that Oenone’s promontory is in fact high enough to be called a mountain (62) and that it stands against (resistit, 62)40 the redundant watery waves (aequoreis . . . aquis, 62) makes even clearer how removed Oenone is from the action that she observes. From here (hinc, 63) she—also nativa—was the first to recognize Paris (cognovi prima, 63). Her first impulse (impetus, 64) was to rush to him through the waves (per fluctus . . . ire, 64). A momentary delay (dum moror, 65) permits just enough time for the bright flash of purple from the prow of his ship (65) to strike her instead with fear (pertimui, 66) and the dawning realization that she has lost Paris even at the moment of his return: he returns for someone else and not for her (alii rediture, 59). The emphatic perfect tense of fulsit (65) following hard upon the historical present moror makes this a markedly punctuated action, piercing the narrative with a flash of color and the awareness of its significance: this purpura (65) is a sign of royalty that Paris had not yet adopted at the time of his departure (cultus non erat ille tuus, 66). This bright flash of purple is especially significant in contrast both with the slow, delaying process Oenone reports for Paris and Helen’s arrival and with the pastoral setting Oenone has insisted is Paris’ natural home. Just

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as this passage aligns with Bolton’s reading of gendered space and limited female mobility in the Heroides,41 so, too, moror (65) links to Gardner’s observations on the gendered importance of delay in elegy writ large, a fact to which Oenone calls overt and frustrated attention as she castigates herself for her inability to act quickly: quid enim furiosa morabar (69). In contrast, as the boat that carries Paris and Helen approaches (fit propior, 77) and touches the shore (77), it is still on the move, even if slowly. Oenone— herself unmoving—follows it with her eyes, seeing the femineas genas (78) of Helen, herself similarly static in Paris’ lap (haerebat gremio, 70). What used to be the case, expressed with the iterative imperfect erat (66), suddenly no longer is: Paris has changed his cultus (66) with his choice of partner, and the knowledge, punctuated by fulsit (65), as noted above, is like a literal bolt from the blue—here the blue sea rather than the blue sky. While Oenone observes her former spouse from an inhospitable Ida as a stark confirmation of both her emotional and geographical isolation, her position here as an observer watching her husband’s return to Troy is reminiscent of Ovid’s wishful imaginings of Rome, viewed either through the lens of his books, which are still permitted to travel home while he himself is not (Tr. 1.1 and 3.1), or in his mind’s eye (Tr. 3.2.21–22; Pont. 4.9.37–42).42 In his reminiscences of the city and its landmarks, he documents not only the city and its emotional associations for him but also—in the manifest futility of his pleas—the hardening of the principate his single Heroides seem to address with heretofore unnoticed prescience. Tristia 3.1 is an especially apt example, as Ovid imagines the letter not only as present in Rome but indeed going on a guided tour of Augustan sites with a special emphasis on the temple of Apollo adjacent to Augustus’ home.43 The association here, in conjunction with Paris’ Troy as a stand-in for Rome as I note above, prepares readers for the bewildering Apollo episode soon to come in Oenone’s letter, one that paints the god not as the patron of Augustus but as a sexual predator. In preparation for the Apollo episode, Oenone’s letter first sharpens its focus on vision, perspective, and the consequences of the failure to see clearly, to which I will return in the final chapter. While Oenone has a clear-eyed understanding that she has been replaced, the “vision” readers expect for her otherwise is not part of the letter.44 Highlighting the nymph’s lack of her usual mantic power, the seer Cassandra instead fulfills the prophetic role in

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Heroides 5, providing insistent dire predictions about the graia iuvenca (117, 118), clearly Helen, who comes to destroy Troy. While Cassandra is not identified by name, it is clear that this is who Ovid means, and that we are to take her as the vates Oenone here is not permitted to be: not only was Paris’ sister (germana, 113) singing her revelation (canebat, 113) but she is also clearly marked as having spoken as a seer (vaticinata, 114), with the scattered hair to match (diffusis . . . comis, 114).45 Oenone’s flashback to Cassandra’s prophecy conveniently includes the seer’s warning that the best course of action would be to sink the polluted ship on which Helen comes, while time still permits (Dum licet, obscenam ponto demergere puppim! 119). Cassandra’s role here as a stand-in seer can also encourage us to enlarge the analogic possibilities and to look ahead, once again, to Ovid in exile, this time as vates et exul,46 when Ovid, like Cassandra, will prove to be another failed vates. Matthew McGowan has argued that in the exile poetry Ovid carves out a space for sacred, prophetic speech even while far from Rome, insisting on his right to speak even as an exile.47 He notes, moreover, that in the exile poetry in general Ovid writes of the present, while when he takes up the mantle specifically of vates he speaks of the future, and more specifically of the future he is attempting to create for himself, returned home to Rome.48 The same is true of Oenone and Cassandra in Heroides 5: Oenone writes of the present, while Cassandra foresees the future. Yet the parallel does not end there. Cassandra is a failed vates in that she predicts events that will indeed come to pass but goes unheeded. Ovid adds another layer to the question of foresight, reflecting on his own short-sightedness in his earlier prayers for a safe old age made with an “unprophetic mind,” animo . . . non divinante (Tr. 4.8.29), and on his own stubborn disbelief: he would not have believed such a miserable old age was waiting for him even had it been foretold to him by the oracles at Delphi or Dodona (Tr. 4.8.43–44). Oenone’s account of Cassandra’s prophecy looks ahead to the future arrival of Helen, of course, but also serves as a transition point to the past and to one of the most bewildering parts of her letter: her rape by Apollo.49 Reactions to this episode have varied widely,50 and there is no scholarly consensus as to how it functions in the letter.51 This scholarly aporia has generally resulted in readers ignoring the incongruence altogether as opposed to pausing and pondering over its oddness.52 Looking closely at this passage leads to a new possibility, consistent with both the letter’s internal focus on

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Oenone’s dire straits and Ovid’s own contemporary context and future relegation. The keys in this reading are the mantic power Ovid has so pointedly denied to his writing heroine and the god in question, Apollo. While Cassandra is clearly flagged in her role of seer, or vates (123), Oenone emphasizes her own blindness by flagging her faithfulness to a deceitful husband now (manet Oenone fallenti casta marito, 133) and her helplessness against the ironically predatory Apollo in her youth (fide conspicuus, 139). The irony depends on fide: the phrase contains the possibility that Apollo, here iden­ tified by his link to Troy as its protector (Troiae munitor, 139), is a rapist “notable for his faith” as well as “notable for his lyre.”53 The god in question is crucial, for Apollo is well known as the divine association of choice for Augustus.54 Moreover, pointing to Apollo here specifically as a lyre player is especially significant, as “the most conspicuous configuration of Apollo in Augustan Rome was as citharode in the cella of his Palatine Temple.”55 Not only does Ovid refer to Apollo in a profoundly unflattering fashion but he also does so in a way that would have been particularly recognizable for his contemporary audience. In Oenone’s telling, moreover, there was no benefit to having been the object of the god’s lust, and indeed, she describes his victory over her in militaristic terms (spolium, 140; luctando, 141). She insists that she did not request reparations for his crime (nec pretium stupri gemmas aurumque poposci, 143) but that he instead found her worthy of recompense (ipse ratus dignam, 145) in language that seems more apt for the early principate than Archaic Greece or Latin elegy: “It is vile for gifts to purchase a free body” (turpiter ingenuum munera corpus emunt, 144).56 Indeed, the reference to what Knox calls “illicit sex with a free-born woman,” especially at the hands of Augustus’ divine affiliate Apollo, reinforces both the contemporary weight of the episode and its severity.57 That this theme appears again elsewhere in Ovid’s treatment of Apollo adds further weight to the problematic nature of the episode as Oenone recounts it. John Miller notes precisely the same problem for Apollo’s pursuit of Daphne in Metamorphoses 1: “As a would-be rapist threatening violence to an unmarried woman the god would aim to violate . . . Augustus’ moral legislation, the lex Iulia de adulteriis.”58 Oenone’s case is an even more damning example, in that she is specifically labeled as ingenua and that the rape is not thwarted; it may well “occur to us whether Augustus would have been pleased to find his own god” in such a role.59

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The compensation Oenone does receive is of course insufficient and is reminiscent of Penelope’s lament at 1.47–50 about the futility of Troy’s fall if she is left alone: the medicas artes (145) granted Oenone by the god are useless in her current predicament.60 As is typical of Ovid’s practice in the Heroides, he here nods to the nymph’s literary history. He turns her universally acknowledged ability to heal Paris when he is wounded in the war to come—and her decision not to do so until it is too late61—into an inability to heal her own ills: deficior prudens artis ab arte mea (150). He may also, however, be nodding to another Apolline association as Apollo Medicus and thus by the association with Augustus (through his patron deity) as potential, but perhaps not actual, healer of the state.62 Similarly, the artes the poet himself plies will be of no use in securing his own escape from exile and a return to his beloved Rome. Indeed, the poet fuses both aspects of Apollo’s skill—song and healing—at Tr. 3.3.10, when he laments the absence of a companion who can ease his suffering with Apollinea . . . arte.63 Just as Ovid describes the trajectory of Oenone’s life from being the favorite of Apollo to her enforced entrapment on Ida, so, too, this letter contains hints of his own fall from favor and resultant relegation in its interaction with the poetry of exile. Although at the time of Heroides 5’s composition Ovid’s exile is far in the future, isolation, separation, and powerlessness were clearly very much on the author’s mind even as the principate was solidifying in its first two decades. The continued intersections of the single Heroides—as here discussed in reference to the letters of Penelope, Briseis, and Oenone—and Ovid’s own laments from Tomis illustrate that in looking back from exile, Ovid found material ripe for repurposing in his much earlier and seemingly unconnected collection of letters. I here suggest, however cautiously,64 that Ovid and Oenone are both victims of Apollo; what was for Oenone a dangerous looming presence in her past becomes for Ovid a real threat that he recognizes retrospectively in the exile poetry. Here in the troubled and troubling Apollo episode, the letter opens itself as a “what if ” for the poet himself, offering a tentative explanation for a seemingly out-of-place conclusion to an otherwise coherent epistle.65 The solution I propose here is of a latent engagement, as with the letters of Penelope and Briseis in particular, with the poet’s contemporary milieu of the increased domination of Augustus via the princeps’ god of choice. The “what if ” that arises from this exploration—“what if ” there is in

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fact veiled criticism here of Augustus and his patron god?—does not bode well for the poet’s relationship with the princeps and thus heightens asso­ ciations with the poet’s eventual exile. If this is the case, then we may see Ovid as using Oenone’s letter to register another early warning that he and his contemporaries ought to have been more concerned about the Apolline princeps even from the early years of his rule. As I have argued throughout this study, the Heroides provide numerous access points to the world beyond their own literary confines, particularly in terms of the consequences of war, whether in its aftermath (letters 7 and 1), in its midst (letter 3), or its point of origin (letter 5). In the final chapter I will discuss how these references become even more pointed in the double letters’ Homeric pair, the correspondence between Paris and Helen. In particular, I will argue that they provide a retrospective cautionary tale that functions on at least two levels, one that again addresses war and its con­ sequences in the literary and real-world spheres, and a second that serves as a guide to reading the Heroides as a whole and a caution against doing so superficially, with an eye only to the collection’s literary games.

chapte r 5

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I

n th i s fi nal chap t er, I continue to move beyond the confines of  literary interpretation to suggest that Paris and Helen stand in for read ers both ancient and modern who are willing to engage and learn from the full range of questions the Heroides present (Helen) and those who insist on seeing them as a sealed system with only literary repercussions (Paris).1 In destabilizing exclusively literary approaches to the Heroides, I aim to illustrate that the communis opinio of Paris as a masterful user of the Ars and Helen as fully persuaded is insufficient,2 too neat, and too sealed off from a context that scholars of other elegiac and mythological poetry see as permeating the literature of the period.3 Helen’s engagement with the single letters in particular provides a roadmap to a productive new way of reading, one that gains significance in particular given its belated time of compo­ sition and focus on the negative consequences of Paris’ dogged insistence that she belongs to him. Helen’s skeptical and careful response as a “resisting reader”4 of many of the single-letter heroines’ experiences as presented by Paris reminds us that simply accepting the dominant narrative—here embodied in Paris’ own letter—misses significant interpretive opportunities. In Helen’s active and resistant reading I see a call to be resisting readers ourselves, both of previous scholarly interpretations of the Heroides collection and of the evolving Augustan program over the course of which they were composed. Simply accepting the dominant scholarly narratives about the Heroides themselves hinders the ability to see how they are influenced by, and perhaps even comment on, the profound changes to Roman society already under way in Ovid’s youth. Persisting in seeing the letters either as mere literary games—even if very sophisticated ones—or as addressing 97

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issues of gender in chronologically generalized ways misses reading in them a warning from Ovid that there is more than meets the eye, as I hope to have shown in the preceding chapters. When we consider a more specific parallel for Paris than the general nonresisting reader, investigating how he may be associated with the young Octavian, a suggestion on which I elaborate below, the warning takes on greater significance. Heroides 16 and 17 are the first pair of Ovid’s double letters and thus the first example of a dialogue of attempted seduction by a mythical hero and the response of his “beloved.” Ovid’s first double-letter pair, written considerably later than the single letters,5 in my view presents Paris as a young man not thinking of the full military and political consequences of his actions— as Oenone suggests is the case in her letter 5—and Helen as the clear-eyed woman who warns him of precisely those consequences. The exempla Paris uses to persuade Helen to elope with him, for example, are a checklist of mythical disasters, indicating that war was not only predictable but indeed the inevitable result of their elopement.6 That Helen sees this with unclouded foresight and that she grounds her objections in references to many of Ovid’s other heroines points to the short-sightedness of Paris’ suit and to the necessity of approaching the letter collection with a critical eye. Paris, on the other hand, is a foil for superficial readers, here mirrored in the unflattering image of a young man blinded by lust and determined to achieve his aims whatever the damage to his fatherland and its inhabitants. To see Paris as successful is to miss the hints throughout the Heroides that these poems raise unsettling questions about key aspects of the Augustan program. This chapter makes its case by examining what scholars have seen as Paris’ artful and persuasive rhetoric, exposing Ovid’s first hero of the double letters as an inept reader of Ovid’s manual of love, the Ars Amatoria.7 It concludes by showing Helen in contrast as an astute model reader both of the Ars and of the Heroides, one who should encourage modern readers likewise to “read more” in order to identify and embrace the unsettling questions the poems raise,8 whether about authority, truth, status, or the poems’ political implications in a drastically changed republic. Hints that readers should take a larger view of this first pair of double letters abound, even in the Ars Amatoria itself, and yet scholars have gen­ erally accepted only part of the Ars’ invitation to read Paris and Helen’s correspondence against it, failing to consider some important stipulations



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of the Ars in doing so. Although Ovid asserts that his Ars is intended specifically for the Romana iuventus (Ars am. 1.459), he frequently references Paris and Helen in the text and enjoins men (Ars am. 1.437–86) and women (3.467–98) alike to use letters as a mode of seduction. Scholars have taken up this invitation especially for Heroides 16, but have ignored Ovid’s crucial assertion that his intended audience for the Ars is the Roman youth—of which Paris is quite pointedly not a part: Paris is enacting a script that was specifically crafted not for him but for the Romana iuventus of the early principate.9 Identifying the youth of Rome as the audience for his Ars nudges Ovid’s readers toward the poem’s real-world context, and yet the implications of Paris’ use, or rather misuse, of such a specifically Roman text has not yet been considered. When we pause to acknowledge and puzzle over the problem of Ovid’s stated audience, a range of interpretations become possible. One is that Paris ought not to be using the Ars at all, which would explain why he does so so poorly, on which see below. Another altogether, however, is that Paris is not a mistaken participant in this seduction (i.e., not a part of the Romana iuventus) but instead is a stand-in for them, an idea that multiplies the interpretive possibilities in intriguing and perhaps disturbing ways. Paris then becomes emblematic of a headstrong generation of Roman youth driven to achieve its own aims regardless of the consequences, or at least convinced of the rightness of its pursuits. Read this way Helen becomes a resisting reader of the mainstream pursuits of the Roman elite in the early principate, or perhaps a stand-in for Rome itself, ambivalent about the new directions it finds itself headed. Pressing the analogy a bit further, though, it is possible to consider a consolidation of the Roman youth into a specific Roman youth, namely Octavian, similarly recognized late—in his case through a posthumous adoption—as the scion of a famous ruling family, and similarly about to embark on a war that would utterly change his sociopolitical world.10 This association, moreover, is not mere speculation: Paris’ own words in Heroides 16 lend support to this parallel. As he recounts the story of his recognition to Helen, he asserts that “although I appeared to be from the plebs, my beauty and strength of spirit were a sign of my hidden nobility” (Forma vigorque animi quamvis de plebe videbar / indicium tectate nobilitatis erat, Her. 16.51–52). The striking and unexpected use of such a specific word as plebs takes on new meaning if we consider Paris as a foil for Octavian,

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himself of plebeian status before he was enrolled in the patrician order by his adoption into the Julian family in Caesar’s will.11 What Andreas Michalopoulos rightly characterizes as “a clear anachronism”12—not unlike Oenone’s legalistic language in her description of the Apollo episode—may have a real point, namely, to insert this mythical speaker into the author’s own historical context, here suggesting an uncomfortable parallel with the prin­ ceps himself. That these two lines are all Paris has to say in specific acknowledgment of his recognition, perhaps wishing to downplay his ignoble youth, makes their specific focus on the plebs all the more noticeable. Further, brushing over his exposure in youth—importantly because of the destruction he was destined to bring to Troy—has an analogy in the way Octavian consistently referred to himself as Caesar, despite the questionable legality of his adoption.13 In light of this possible association, Helen’s warnings and demurrals then take on a different color, one befitting the author’s own retrospective glance back across the decades between the composition of the single and the double letters. Ovid the feminized author shifts from an exilic identification with Oenone, as discussed in the previous chapter, to an association with Helen, a critical reader of the origins of the stories I examine in this study and of the changed res publica at the same time. Especially if we take seriously the possibility that Paris may be a foil for Octavian (from the perspective of his long-standing status as Augustus at the time of the double letters’ composition), it is all the more important to read Paris’ letter with a critical eye that questions how persuasively he argues his suit in the mold of the Ars. The scholarly consensus is that Paris is a skilled lover who closely and accurately follows the advice of the prae­ ceptor in the Ars.14 While correspondences with the Ars are often quite clear in Paris’ imagined letter to Helen, Paris’ skill in following its advice is far less masterful than current scholarship asserts. Ovid complicates the issue of Paris’ seduction and the precepts of the Ars by often alluding to the Ars while having his hero violate its commands with alarming frequency.15 Paris, that is, is a model for how the Romana iuventus contemporary to Ovid ought not to behave, whether in their amatory pursuits or in their readings of Ovid’s own poetry. Paris’ seductive missteps, especially at the banquet (Her. 16.215–58) and in his projection of the impact of Helen’s desertion of Menelaus (Her. 16.325–52), show that Paris is not the polished lover the Ars hopes to create but instead a rather inept one who appears naïf and buffoonish to



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a woman of Helen’s sophistication as Ovid presents her in Heroides 17. Careful reading of Heroides 16 shows that Paris is far from the artist a good reader of the praeceptor ought to become,16 anticipating or echoing the charge of imperceptive reading Ovid lays against Augustus repeatedly in the poetry of exile.17 Examination of Helen’s response to Paris, on the other hand, will show her to be precisely the careful, perceptive student and reader that Paris is not.18 Through her attention to the praeceptor’s advice, moreover, Helen is able to foresee the consequences of joining Paris19 and hedges her bets accordingly in the best tradition of the successful puella.20 Just as Helen provides Paris with enough encouragement to expect she will yield to his advances while still leaving him uncertain, so, too, Ovid may be supplying just enough material in his Heroides to suggest that the letters reflect concerns of his contemporaries, while remaining noncommittal; these are, after all, simply mythological letters. Fundamentally, Paris’ attempt at seduction by post through a misguided application of the Ars is an ineffective attempt to perform the role of a lover. Duncan Kennedy provides a reading of the Ars as a pedagogical tool that is apt for Paris: “What is to be learned—that is, imitated—by the pupil is not a thing or a concept but a text (such as tu mihi sola places). These ‘texts’ are what a script is to a play: a set of lines or directions which, for their full effect, must be ‘enacted.’”21 This enactment is precisely where Paris fails in his attempt to be an ideal elegiac lover: his recitation of the script is inexact and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the lesson he aspires to master. Once he has chosen the one to whom he may say, “You alone are pleasing to me,” Paris remains focused on his prize and will use whatever weapons he can find in his rhetorical arsenal—qualibet arte (Ars am. 1.612),22 one might say—no matter how inapt or excessive, to achieve his end.23 Helen, on the other hand, follows quite closely another course of action also identified by Kennedy in his study of Ars 3’s advice for women, and for Ovid’s heroines in particular.24 She proves the ideal pupil Kennedy imagines by not only reading the Ars and Ovid’s other recommended bibliography—especially the Heroides—but by learning from them as well and using them to her advantage.25 Following her critical model as a resisting reader, we may come to a greater understanding of how the Heroides bear witness to the crystallization of the principate and indeed signal that such a process ought to have been evident to close readers of Roman society at the time it was unfolding.

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Carefully studying the interactions of the Heroides with their sources, contemporary intertexts, and Ovid’s own exilic works—as I have so far done for a selection of the single Heroides—uncovers evidence that Ovid saw the proverbial writing on the wall and couched it, always carefully providing a “hermeneutic alibi,”26 by taking on the personae of his letter-writing heroines. Paris’ failure to follow the Ars correctly is evident from the start even in his choice of Helen. The praeceptor is quite clear in his instructions as to how his student should choose an appropriate girl: “Choose the one to whom you may say, ‘You alone are pleasing to me.’ She will not come to you slipped down through the slender breezes: you must seek with your own eyes an appropriate girl” (elige cui dicas “tu mihi sola places.” / haec tibi non tenues veniet delapsa per auras;/ quaerenda est oculis apta puella tuis, Ars am. 1.42–44). Paris’ choice is not, however, from a multitude of Roman puellae27 but from the three goddesses at the Judgment: Paris chooses Venus, not as a love object, but as guarantor of his prize, Helen. That Helen is his prize rather than his beloved he continuously reminds her throughout Heroides 16; while references to her beauty and his worthiness as a lover abound, Paris’ main focus is on the fact that she is “owed” to him (Her. 16.15, 19–20, 35, 263–64, 298) and that her capitulation is a foregone conclusion. On this point in particular, an association of Paris with Octavian results in a deeply problematic parallel, namely that Rome’s submission to Caesar’s heir was another foregone conclusion. Given the consequences we know are to follow Helen’s elopement with Paris and the implication that a disastrous and largely pointless war was also the result of Rome’s acceptance of Octavian’s leadership, Ovid’s potential commentary here is far from flattering. Paris’ epistolary courtship of Helen is imagined by Ovid as taking place during Paris’ stay at Sparta and after the departure of Menelaus. Paris seems to start off on the right foot by writing a letter, yet Ovid’s suggestion is that the letter go before the lover: Paris is already present in Menelaus’ palace and writing a letter when one is not required for communication with his beloved. Further, although Paris introduces his letter to Helen in accordance with the precepts of the Ars, claiming that in his letter she has words that serve as the messenger of his soul (habes animi nuntia verba mei, Her. 16.10), he ignores the praeceptor’s further injunction to “let a letter go and be inscribed with charming words; let it make trial of her mind and let it



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first try out the path” (ergo eat et blandis peraretur littera verbis / exploret animos primaque temptet iter, Ars am. 1.455–56). Instead of sending the letter first on its own iter of reconnaissance, Paris himself has already made the trip to Sparta.28 Paris’ voyage to Sparta itself is also directly opposed to the Ars’ recommendations: Non ego quaerentem vento dare vela iubebo, nec tibi ut invenias longa terenda via est. Andromedan Perseus nigris portarit ab Indis, raptaque sit Phrygio Graia puella viro; tot tibi tamque dabit formosas Roma puellas, “haec habet” ut dicas “quicquid in orbe fuit.” (Ars am. 1.51–56) I shall not command you while seeking [a girl = materiam] to give sails to the wind. Nor do you need to make a long voyage in order to find one. Granted that Perseus carried off Andromeda from the dark Indes, and that the Greek girl was carried off by the Phrygian lad; Rome will give you so many and such beautiful girls that you will say, “This city has whatever has existed in the world!” While it is true that Paris’ abduction of Helen is an example of when such excessive wandering to find a puella is acceptable, Ovid’s point is that Rome will furnish plenty of girls for an eager lover.29 His advice is specific to Roman lovers and is not intended for mythological foreigners like Paris. Paris, that is, should not even be trying to use the Ars in his pursuit of Helen.30 If we take Paris’ approach in Heroides 16 as a parallel for Octavian’s approach to Rome during the run-up to the civil war, his response to Caesar’s death, namely, returning to Rome to acknowledge his status as Caesar’s heir, may seem excessive.31 In addition to overdoing his approach by an in-person arrival, Paris does make a more elegiacally suitable overture through Helen’s maids, Clymene and Aethra, with blandis . . . sonis (Her. 16.260). The Ars points out that such contact through the puella’s maids is essential to a lover’s success. Paris here attempts to follow the praeceptor’s instructions, even in addressing the

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maids by name, as suggested at Ars am. 2.253. Even so, the maids do not perform the role of abetting consciae customary to elegy, but instead he acknowledges that they ask him to drop his suit (Her. 16.261–62). Yet Paris is far from deterred by the maids’ suggestion and confirms his determi­ nation with the assertion to Helen that “you would be the prize of a great struggle and the victor would be able to have you for his own couch” (pre­ tium magni certaminis esses, / teque suo posset victor habere toro, Her. 16.263– 64). Helen here is again treated as what she, in fact, is for Paris: a “prize” worthy of a heroic struggle, magni certaminis. The list of examples of hard-won women Paris provides as precedent are, as with his exempla of Medea and Ariadne, somewhat suspect. Atalanta, herself described as praemia (Her. 16.265), and Hippodamia (Her. 16.266) were won as brides only by famous deceptions.32 That Paris is willing to admit that his audacity in carrying Helen off could proceed boldly in accordance with the regulations (leges, Her. 16.269) that won those unfortunate women is, while at least honest advertising, hardly a sound tactic in convincing Helen to accept his advances. In each case, an astute reader should have grave concerns about both the bona fides of the writer and the consequences of his potential success. This is demonstrably the case for Helen. She questions the sincerity of Paris’ love (si modo, quem praefers, non simulatur amor, Her. 17.36), specifically addresses him as infide (Her. 17.195) in reference to his current spouse Oenone, and suggests that he is simply not capable of constancy (Adde, quod, ut cupias constans in amore manere, / non potes, Her. 17.199–200). If we consider Helen for her part as a corresponding stand-in for Ovid and his peers, this assessment of the young prince questions both the fidelity and commitment of Octavian’s initial enterprise. What Paris seems to have taken most to heart from the Ars is its urging that his entreaties not be too modest, exiguas (Ars am. 1.440). Accordingly, Paris presents his prayers on a grand scale, and as he does so, he often lacks the moderation prescribed for the elegiac amator’s successful pursuit. Indeed, Paris neglects the praeceptor’s additional words on the subject: Sed lateant vires, nec sis in fronte disertus; effugiant voces verba molesta tuae. Quis, nisi mentis inops, tenerae declamat amicae? Saepe valens odii littera causa fuit. (Ars am. 1.463–66)



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Let your powers lie hidden, and don’t wear your learning on your forehead; let your speech avoid irritating words. Who but a fool declaims to his tender girlfriend? Often a strong letter has been the cause of distaste. In a letter replete with inflated self-presentation and illogical rhetoric, legalistic language and patronizing assessments of Helen’s rusticitas,33 Paris presents himself as the ideal response to the praeceptor’s seemingly rhetorical question at line 465. The essential point here is that the praeceptor urges the would-be lover not to overdo it: Paris’ letter, however, is an extraordinarily involved and lengthy monologue at 378 lines.34 Paris thus again demonstrates himself not to be an apt pupil in his reconfiguration of its script. Paris’ assertion that Helen constitutes the praemia magna he claims are his due (Her. 16.19) frames her conquest as a military endeavor rather than that of a seducer whose success has been promised by the gods.35 His unwittingly appropriate terminology, however, foreshadows the looming war that only Paris refuses to acknowledge will follow. Indeed, the Ars provides a warning to Paris that the prizes of war and of love are in his case closely related. The praeceptor discusses the divine beauty contest and Paris’ arbitration of it in ways that present Paris as an exemplum it would be wisest not to follow: Iam dea laudatae dederat mala praemia formae colle sub Idaeo vincere digna duas; iam nurus ad Priamum diverso venerat orbe, Graiaque in Iliacis moenibus uxor erat; iurabant omnes in laesi verba mariti, nam dolor unius publica causa fuit. (Ars am. 1.683–88) Already the goddess—worthy to conquer two others under the hill of Ida—had granted the wicked prizes of her praised beauty. Already a daughter-in-law had come to Priam from another part of the world, and a Greek wife was within the Trojan walls. Everyone swore in the cause of the injured husband, for the pain of one was a public cause. Here the praemia—Helen—are not “owed,” as Heroides 16’s Paris insists, but actually harmful (mala, Ars am. 1.683). The private grief that Paris will

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inflict on Menelaus, the dolor unius (Ars am. 1.688) will become a publica causa (Ars am. 1.688), the most famous one in ancient literature. Were Paris a more careful reader of the Ars—just the sort Helen will prove to be at Her. 17.245–52—he would know that the road he treads is very dangerous. If Paris provides a backward glance at Octavian’s pursuit of Rome, the publica causa and the res publica are similarly conflated, again with the sense that the association was not beneficial but instead violent and destructive. Paris’ lack of “recognition” of himself in the Ars is disturbingly consistent with the brash, confident persona he presents throughout Heroides 16 and indeed with Octavian’s own behavior at the start of his rise. I here refer not only to Octavian’s return to Rome on learning of Caesar’s death but more spe­ cifically to the use to which he vigorously put himself in meeting the terms of his father’s will, raising his own army, marching on Rome to gain the consulship at an unprecedentedly young age, and forging an alliance with Antony.36 Paris’ ignorant bravura is in fact neatly encapsulated in his claims that no one will follow them should Helen leave Menelaus for him: Nec tu rapta time ne nos fera bella sequantur, concitet et vires Graecia magna suas. Tot prius abductis ecqua est repetita per arma? Crede mihi, vanos res habet ista metus. (Her. 16.341–44) Don’t be afraid once you’ve been carried off that fierce wars will follow us, and that great Greece will stir up its powers. From so many women abducted before now, who was sought back with weapons? Believe me—this matter contains empty fears. As Kenney points out, the response to Paris’ question at 343 is one he himself should know: women were sought back “in precisely the two cases cited by Paris.”37 Paris’ claim that Helen’s fears are empty ones (Her. 16.344) is an instance of willful ignorance. His blinkered confidence calls to mind Octavian’s march on Rome with his adoptive father’s veterans in August of 43, another move with significant precedent of violent outcomes for Rome, most notably in the extortionate actions of Sulla in the turbulent years preceding Julius Caesar’s own rise. While Sulla was arguably successful, the cost to the state in terms of proscriptions and confiscations was an enormous price to



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pay, and Octavian’s willingness to resort to the same tactics was cause for great concern, but too late to make much of a difference. The caution Helen will express in her response seems to take into account the negative consequences Ovid’s Paris is so eager to ignore, even in the specific examples he provides in his attempts to reassure her. By extension, readers of Octavian’s early actions would also have done well to be more cautious in their embrace of him.38 As usual for Ovid, though, while he may tacitly allegorize the danger Octavian as a youth presented, cloaking him in the inept and therefore unthreatening disguise of Paris makes it impossible to charge him convincingly of subversion.39 A key aspect of this approach is the very inanity of Paris’ exempla that aim to convince Helen to run away with him. The example of Medea (Her. 16.347) is particularly pointed, as a substantial part of Apollonius’ Argonau­ tica is devoted to the pursuit of Medea and Jason by her Colchian family. Medea is also a poor precedent to cite given the destruction she causes to Jason and his family once arrived in Thessaly. Euripides’ Medea, and Ovid’s own as presented in Heroides 12 and the Metamorphoses, is hardly an example Paris should wish Helen to follow. Helen, in fact, responds quite specifically on this score, noting that the fallacious Jason promised Medea everything (Omnia Medeae fallax promisit Iason, Her. 17.229) but was abandoned by him all the same. His next example is another Ovid also treats in the single letters, that of Ariadne’s capture and abandonment by Theseus. Paris claims this happened without dangerous incident: “Theseus, the one who also seized you, seized the daughter of Minos; but Minos calls Crete to no weapons” (te quoque qui rapuit, rapuit Minoida Theseus; / nulla tamen Minos Cretas ad arma vocat, Her. 16.349–50). Given that Ariadne was subsequently abandoned by her hero, and that this same hero also abducted a very young Helen, this can hardly constitute effective persuasion, and indeed Helen calls Ariadne a witness to the perfidy of guests who profess their love (Cer­ tus in hospitibus non est amor . . . testis Minoia virgo est, Her. 17.191, 193).40 There is another problem with the examples Paris cites specifically in relation to the Ars, as Andreas Michalopoulos astutely recognizes: “The stories of Medea and Ariadne are cited by Ovid in the Ars as characteristic examples of the faithlessness of men (Ars 3.33–36).”41 Thus this particular pair of female abductees is doubly inappropriate in Paris’ attempt to persuade Helen to leave Menelaus for him.42 That these are the examples Ovid chooses to

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place at the pen of his stand-in for the Roman youth, or indeed the most significant individual Roman youth of his generation, would seem to bode poorly for Rome’s leadership during a time of significant change. The efficacy of Paris’ elegiac persuasion can only truly be determined in Helen’s response to it, some initial examples of which I have provided above. Helen, despite her claims of innocence, timidity, and inexperience in games of love (Her. 17.13, 141–42, 257–58), proves to be far more adept than her seducer in marshaling the resources of elegy.43 If these protestations are to be read as coming from Ovid’s own pose of pseudonaïveté, especially originating in or near the period of exile, they take on even greater poignancy. There is a marked irony in Ovid, the actual author behind the mask of the praeceptor amoris, attempting to frame himself as an artless ingenue while portraying Paris-cum-Octavian as an inept would-be seducer.44 Presenting a parallel for Octavian who tries to act in the manner the princeps found objectionable enough to be the cause for Ovid’s exile—merely for writing about it—is both amusing and risky, and again impossible to prove. In any case, Helen’s epistle, when read in terms of her response to Paris’ ill-chosen examples, illustrates her clear-eyed, well-informed, and cautious response to Paris’ overtures: indeed, it is not clear even by the end of the poem that she has made up her mind to leave with Paris.45 Read as a reflection of Ovid’s or his contemporaries’ ambivalence about the rise of Octavian, her response reflects a profound lack of conviction that succumbing to Octavian’s suit would be wise. At the letter’s close she has coyly if somewhat grudgingly given Paris permission to continue his correspondence by means of her maids (Her. 17.267–68), which, while often an important prelude to elegiac success, does not guarantee it. Where Kennedy has identified the importance of a “script” to follow, it is Helen rather than Paris who proves a more gifted student and reproducer of the Ars’ lessons. Indeed, Helen is much like the apt pupil Kennedy describes elsewhere, the self-driven student who learns from the praecep­ tor’s suggested bibliography—not merely the Ars but the other Heroides as well—and puts those lessons into practice in her letter to Paris, critiquing his rhetoric while at the same time remaining, at least ostensibly, open to persuasion.46 In this, Helen provides a model for readers to emulate, both in terms of their approach to the single letters and, in the bigger picture, to



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their potential for sociopolitical commentary. Indeed, Helen of Heroides 17 demonstrates clearly that she has read and understood the praeceptor’s reading list by “observing it, theorizing it, and learning from it,”47 especially in how she follows his advice on written correspondence: she does not present herself as easy to woo (facilem, Ars am. 3.475)48 yet does not write too much e duro (Ars am. 3.476). In short, she crafts a response that ensures Paris will both fear and hope, and in this she follows the praeceptor’s advice exactly: fac timeat speretque simul (Ars am. 3.477).49 Readings that ignore the former element in favor of the latter do Ovid’s Helen an injustice.50 The same may be said for Ovid himself in his crafting of single heroines who reflect concerns contemporary to their time of composition. The most relevant parallel here is the hope that the principate will resolve concerns about dispossession, isolation, and powerlessness among Ovid’s peers, and a fear that they will not. The foregone conclusion for the individual heroines, bound by the well-known and immutable outcome of their stories,51 is that there will seldom be a favorable one. That the only such positive resolution is provided for the first of the letters, that from Penelope to Ulysses, is itself telling, as the letters progress from happy reunion (Her. 1) to abandonment (Her. 3 and 5) and suicide (Her. 7). In his creation of Helen Ovid adheres to a consistent approach of ambiguity, providing fodder for those who wish to “read more” while maintaining a plausible innocence by grounding himself in the abstract world of myth.52 Two examples illustrate how Ovid’s Helen internalizes and deploys the Ars’ advice in ways that reflect her concerns about Paris’ suit: her proposal that vis might be an option and her interpretation of what will happen should she leave with Paris. In this approach by Helen lie the seeds of a response we as readers may have to the Heroides collection as a whole. Acknowledging both that violence may indeed be necessary and that it may be disastrous all the same presents a distilled version of the context for the civil wars and their aftermath. The implication that the result of Paris and Helen’s elopement was a decade-long war after which the world was never the same only adds to the question of how the Romana iuventus—again, the actual audience of the Ars, the script that scholars see Paris and Helen following here—responded to those consequences. Might they not have started to think about the wars in their own recent memory and the impact

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on their own world? Such a question is impossible to answer, but it impoverishes this segment of Ovid’s elegiac output and does a disservice to Ovid’s contemporary readership to discount such connections, especially when we see a constellation of similar phenomena throughout the Heroides letter collection, as I have demonstrated in the previous chapters. When Helen suggests that Paris may have to carry her off—perhaps with her veiled consent—her words at Her. 17.185–86 allude both to his at Her. 16.325–30 and to those of Ars am. 1.673: vim licet appelles: grata est vis ista puellis, “You may apply force: girls like that kind of compulsion.” Helen’s version of this script is consistent with her studiously ambivalent self-presentation throughout her letter and also picks up Paris’ poor job of persuading her: quod male persuades, utinam bene cogere posses! / vi mea rus­ ticitas excutienda fuit (Her. 17.185–86, “That which you persuade ineffectively, would that you could force it effectively! My simplicity could be shaken off by means of force”). Helen progresses methodically from the fairly general cogere to a specification of physical force (vis) rather than more effective rhetorical persuasion, concluding the violent physical imagery with excu­ tienda.53 Framing this menacing undertone as a necessary result of a lack of ineffective, nonviolent persuasion provides yet another dig at the methods by which Augustus persuaded his peers to accept his rule. Taking a moment to unpack the ideas here, however, leads once again to some uncomfortable parallels with Octavian’s ability to impose his will at Rome and how his peers may have felt about it. Helen’s wording here skates close to an allusion to Horace’s tongue-in-cheek reference to Augustus at Sermones 1.3.4 as Caesar, qui cogere posset (“Caesar Augustus, who could use compulsion”).54 The contrafactual imperfect subjunctive “could use force,” which implies the logical conclusion “but does not,” retains the possibility that Caesar could also change his mind at any moment.55 Should we accept Ovid’s words here as a reminder of Horace’s unsettling joke about the prin­ ceps’ ability to compel writers specifically to write and to speak only when and what he wishes, a contemporary implication presents itself. If we see the double letters as composed in the exile period, the phrasing comes across as a rueful recollection and indeed a refashioning of Horace’s jest as not merely hypothetical: this same Caesar compelled Ovid himself to leave Rome as a result, in part, of his writing. Should we accept instead a reference to Augustus’ ability to impose his will more generally, especially looking back



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again to the start of the principate, we see an Octavian who may, in fact, have been seen by his peers as forcing them to go along with his plans for “re-establishing” the res publica. Ovid’s Helen, moreover, here picks up on what is perhaps the most important unresolved issue in classical mythology, namely, whether she absconded with Paris or was stolen by him. A possible allusion to Horace here only deepens the ambiguity, adding yet another layer of commentary on Octavian’s rise to power, again with plausible deniability. Helen’s letter thus both studiously and consistently avoids commitment to one version or the other—did she choose Paris? did she not?—leaving the responsibility for her desertion of Menelaus firmly on Paris’ shoulders.56 In this, she proves once again an astute reader of the Ars, having learned, as James suggests female readers of the Ars will, “that her refusal will be read as permission.”57 In recognizing this, Ovid’s Helen can have it both ways, leaving the road open for a plausible return to Menelaus as we see them in the Odyssey, and in the interim, space for Helen’s regret when we encounter her in books 3 and 6 of the Iliad.58 So, too, the reference to force and compulsion by Paris leaves open the possibility that—even if Paris is recognized as Octavian—he was in fact granted permission, at least tacitly, to proceed with his takeover of the state, and that indeed such an outcome could have some advantages. Similarly, Helen reminds us that the consequences of her departure from Sparta will result in the epic outcome she is known for, whether vis is employed or not. Her reading of these consequences (Her. 17.245–50) also shows her clear comprehension of the Ars and of mythological history,59 especially as compared with Paris’ assessment (Her. 16.341–70).60 In fact, Helen corrects Paris quite specifically in both of these arenas. Where the praeceptor observes that Helen’s departure became a publica causa (Ars am. 1.688), Helen has no doubt what this means for her current situation: war (nec dubito quin, te si prosequar, arma parentur, Her. 17.245). In response to Paris’ mention of Hippodamia (Her. 16.265), Helen notes that the consequence of this famous episode was full blown war (Her. 16.247–50), just as it would be if she went with Paris. As an astute reader of the Ars, however, and indeed the single Heroides, she has a further concern about Paris himself. This concern is not only about whether he will be faithful,61 given his previous entanglement with Oenone,62 but also about how the love stories of heroines tend to turn out.

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While Paris mentions several of Ovid’s letter-writing heroines in his own letter as examples of women who have done as Helen ought to, namely, abscond with their lovers, Helen correctly sees these women as the cautionary tales they in fact are.63 When she names Hypsipyle and Ariadne at line 193 as witnesses (each is a testis) to the perfidy of men, and Medea in greater detail at lines 229–34, Heroides letters 6, 10, and 12 cannot but leap to mind. The same is true for the instructions at Ars am. 3.31–43, where women are cautioned against untrustworthy guests—precisely the sort of situation in which Helen now finds herself—whose victims also pen letters to their disappointing lovers.64 Helen’s response to Paris, in short, shows her not only to be a good student of the Ars but also of the preceding single-letter collection as well as excellent at synthesizing lessons from a variety of sources and proceeding with the appropriate caution. Helen’s own mode of reading thus authorizes the approach I have taken in the previous chapters, in which I have expanded her lesson into Ovid’s own context. Doing so deepens our understanding of the Heroides collection’s hermeneutic potential and strengthens in particular my reading of the letters of Penelope and Briseis as expressing concerns of a feminized elite in the early decades of the principate. Despite the caution exemplified by Helen, however, the mythographic outcome is, of course, unaffected: no matter how good an erotodidactic student Helen is, the story of Paris and Helen is already written.65 The same is patently true for Ovid’s readers both ancient and modern: the principate that is establishing itself at the time of the single letters’ composition has, by the time Ovid writes the double-letter pairs, become the foregone conclusion that perspicacious contemporaries might have predicted and that later readers know as established fact. The end of the republic is as inevitable as the outcome of Homer that we, and Ovid’s audience, know is to come. Helen clearly sees the outcome but nevertheless refuses to write herself into a corner: while her letter engages with the problems so well known from her literary tradition,66 it provides no real answers. Helen’s ambivalence becomes even more significant in this light, raising questions about the collaboration of the Roman elite in the origin and development of the principate, sug­ gesting that all parties share responsibility for it, whatever their feelings about the result. The eventual balance of good and bad outcomes of the pax augustana that is “already written”67—whether from the perspective of Ovid’s composition of the double letters, from his exile, or from our modern point



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of view—is highlighted by Helen’s thorough assessment of the consequences of yielding to Paris that nonetheless leads her to a deeply ambivalent conclusion. That Ovid’s Helen makes it clear how conflicted she is about Paris may also reflect, in this allegorical reading, a Rome conflicted about Octavian, a feeling that may not have lessened with his transformation into Augustus. In this allegorical reading of Paris and Helen I have suggested that Paris and Helen be read as stand-ins for Augustus and Ovid’s peers, respectively, and more generally as a foil, again respectively, for the superficial reader of the Heroides collection as opposed to one who digs beneath their surfaces. In contrast with Paris’ headstrong and entitled optimism, Helen, for—or perhaps because of—all her coyness, can serve as a model for attentive readers of the Heroides. Placed as she is at the start of the double-letter collection and in response to the first, inept, male letter writer, Ovid’s Helen urges us to look deeper and to engage the troubling questions the letters raise. It asks us to respond to those questions ourselves by taking those questions seriously, perhaps even as barometers of their actual author’s experience, and those of his peers, during Rome’s transition from republic to empire. Her example, moreover, urges us to read the entire collection with a keener eye, as I have attempted to do in the case studies provided on the other letters that have their origin in the Homeric cycle. In the brief coda that follows, I will suggest where that might take us in some of the final letters of the collection.

Coda Hindsight and the Double Heroides

As I suggested at the end of the previous chapter, there are wider implications for understanding the Heroides as a whole—both the double and single letters—in my reading of Ovid’s presentation of Paris and Helen in the first double-letter pair.1 Those implications are most readily visible in the final paired letters, especially if we continue to consider the male letter writer as a stand-in for Octavian/Augustus and his female addressee as Rome’s ruling elite. Just as Helen’s letter provides a clear sense that she knew exactly how badly things would go if she left with Paris—and yet had no choice owing to the conclusion foretold in the Homeric cycle—the remaining correspondence of the double letters also provides glimpses of disaster not averted. As I note in the introduction to this volume, the chronology of the Heroides letters is significant to my understanding of them: the single letters I discuss present themes of forward-looking concern that reflect anxieties at the dawn of the principate, whereas the double-letter correspondence between Paris and Helen provides another perspective, one of a literarily prospective, real-world hindsight. That backward-looking perspective on the single-letter collection from a remove of several decades, and the development of the principate during that time, is a confirmation of the concerns expressed in the single letters. If indeed the double letters are the product of the exile period itself, when Ovid can look back across the years with a full sense of the principate’s impact on his own life, his assessment is understandably one of unease and perhaps even disappointment. I pass over the correspondence of Leander and Hero, outliers in the double letters in that the mutuality of their love is beyond question. Even in these letters, though, the outcome of the lovers’ entirely preventable destruction 114

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may also have a lesson for a continued glance at the relationship of the prin­ ceps and a Rome exhausted by civil war and impatient for its conclusion.2 Had Leander waited for the storm to pass and instead formulated a plan to visit Hero on calm seas, his death and her sorrow could clearly have been averted. There may be lessons here, too, about an impatient princeps rushing headlong to the destruction of the republic under the justification of unity, but I do not wish to push this too far. In this closing discussion I focus rather on the extortionate seduction of Acontius and the helpless acquiescence of Cydippe, which presents a view of authority that is in many ways even more troubling than what we glimpse in the case of Paris and Helen.3 I briefly suggested some years ago that Cydippe’s seduction by fruit in the closing double-letter pair was really no more than entrapment and extortion,4 offering her continued life in return for an unwanted marital union. Returning again to the introduction of this volume, I remind readers of the thorough exhaustion of the Roman people and their desperate desire for peace, whatever the cost. A union with a strong young man who was not afraid to reimagine traditional religion and jurisprudence to his own benefit fits the bill both for the ailing Cydippe and a republic teetering on the edge of collapse. The myth of Acontius and Cydippe is not as well known as the Homeric cycle, and thus readers may benefit from a brief explanation of the couple’s courtship.5 While at a festival of Apollo, Acontius catches sight of Cydippe and falls in love with her. She, unfortunately, is engaged to marry someone else. On the eve of her wedding she is struck ill, an event that will recur twice again. At this point her father consults the oracle at Delphi, who reports that Cydippe had sworn a secret oath to marry only Acontius while at the festival. The original engagement is broken and Acontius and Cydippe marry, presumably happily so.6 How, though, did the affianced Cydippe come to make such an oath? Apparently, Eros inspired Acontius to inscribe the oath on an apple and roll it in front of Cydippe, who picked it up, read it aloud— as was common reading practice—and bound herself to her unknown suitor while in the temple precinct of Artemis and in the name of that goddess.7 As Rosenmeyer puts it, Acontius “cleverly arranges that his words actually become her words. He writes the oath in the first person, anticipating her enunciation. Once he has enticed her to read, ensnared her in his plot, he never lets her go.”8 There is an additional dimension to Acontius’ inscribed

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oath and Cydippe’s enunciation of it: it is legally binding.9 These details are important to Ovid’s presentation of Acontius, as it shows another young lover who has decided to marry a woman he has not even met and to pursue any means necessary to make her his, including legal entrapment. In this, Acontius is like Paris,10 who admits that he loved Helen before even knowing who she was (te prius optavi, quam mihi nota fores, Her. 16.36); but Paris at least had the good grace not to extort a promise from Helen even before addressing her. As we move through the double-letter collection, we might observe that things have gone from bad to worse. Acontius’ seductive technique, highlighted by Ovid in Heroides 20, shows him to be an unscrupulous individual who will go to any lengths, including religious and legal manipulation, to achieve and justify his pursuit of Cydippe.11 The letter opens with menace, both urging its addressee to lay aside her fear (Pone metum! Her. 20.1) and acknowledging the reason for it, namely, that the letter may contain another trap. He assures her that she “will swear nothing to a lover here this time” as a result of reading (nihil hic iterum iurabis amanti, Her. 20.1). The reason for this is also made clear: Acontius already has what he wants in that Cydippe has already promised herself to him, and that once is enough (promissam satis est te semel esse mihi, Her. 20.2).12 Read on the heels of Paris and Helen and my suggestion that Paris may reflect Octavian himself, continuing to read in the same vein presents another uncomfortable parallel. In the chapter on Heroides 3, I discuss the oath of 32 BCE13 by which Octavian required individuals to swear loyalty to him; Cydippe’s oath, here clearly extorted, calls it to mind again in very disturbing ways. The closing pair of letters does not merely open with a reminder of manipulated oaths for the benefit of a young man attempting to pursue a profoundly unwilling target, but in fact the oath receives the lion’s share of attention in both letters 20 and 21. As with the Apollo episode in Oenone’s letter, the degree of attention, despite its utility for Ovid’s epistolary approach,14 seems excessive. This puzzling sense of excess may again express concerns, whether latent or overt, on Ovid’s part that the oath once sworn to Octavian seems in retrospect to have been extorted and to have come at a cost of acquiescence without belief. The preponderance of legal language in Acontius’ letter, moreover, serves as a reminder of the extensive legislation proposed by Augustus or his representatives to smooth the transition from republic to principate.15 The possibility of such allusions in

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Ovid’s poetry is supported by Matthew Roller’s perceptive discussion of the incorporation in Lucan’s Pharsalia of elements found in the extant oaths to the Julio-Claudian principes.16 He argues compellingly that Lucan “invites his readers to infer that these oaths perpetuate in contemporary society the divisiveness of the Caesarians’ alienating view.”17 It is precisely the profoundly alienating discourse Acontius deploys even as he reminds Cydippe of her oath, and Cydippe’s helpless and aggrieved response to it, that I consider here, with a particular focus on fraud, extortion, and the return of Apollo as dubious participant in the discourse in question. From a menacing beginning, Acontius’ letter grows more aggressive as he justifies his actions by the end he was pursuing and his motivations for doing so. He does not care that Cydippe sees herself as deceived (deceptam, Her. 20.21) by his trickery (nostra fraude, Her. 20.21) provided that his “love for her is recognized as the cause of the deception” (dum fraudis nostrae causa fertur amor, Her. 20.22). Nor does he deny having engaged in fraud, concluding instead that his ends justified his means, for “what did my deception seek, unless that I be joined to you as one” (Fraus mea quid petiit, nisi uti tibi iungerer unum? Her. 20.23). He will, moreover, be content for “his action to be called fraud, and to be labeled a trickster, if it be a trick to wish to possess what you love” (Sit fraus huic facto nomen, dicarque dolosus, / si tamen est, quod ames, velle tenere dolus, Her. 20.31–32).18 This passage, densely packed with undenied deception, continues with Acontius’ assertion that he would do it all over again (33), seeking continuously what he wants without cease regardless of the harm it causes to his beloved (si noceo, quod amo, fateor, sine fine nocebo, / teque, peti caveas tu liceat, usque petam, Her. 20.35–36). He reminds Cydippe that others have resorted to more violent measures (Per gladios alii placitas rapuere puellas, Her. 20.37), warns of one thousand more tricks at his disposal (Her. 20.41), and informs her that he, too, is prepared to use violence if he must (Si nil proficient artes, venie­ mus ad arma, / vique tui cupido rapta ferere sinu, Her. 20.47–48). The picture is of a young man without remorse,19 determined to have what he wants, regardless of the will or well-being of his target.20 If we are again looking at a parallel, however veiled, for Octavian when he administered his own oath to the Roman populace in 32 BCE and the others that followed at regular intervals, the insistence on fraud and entrapment at thirty or more years’ distance is profoundly problematic.

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All of this is couched, moreover, in repeated references throughout the letter to Cydippe’s obligation to comply, endorsed by the goddess herself in whose name she swore, and threats of what will happen to Cydippe if she does not do so. Beginning with an accusatory reminder of the goddess’ presence at and acceptance of the vow (non potes hoc factum teste negare dea. / Adfuit et, praesens ut erat, tua verba notavit / et visa est mota dicta tulisse coma, Her. 20.18–20), Acontius then paints Diana herself as the victim who did not deserve to be deceived—along with himself, of course—by a false oath (Non meruit falli mecum quoque Delia, Her. 20.95) and rapidly launches into a list of the goddess’ famous acts of vengeance (101–6). After a discursus on Cydippe’s role in her own suffering (Her. 20.109–22), how Acontius himself suffers at her illness (Her. 20.123–26), and an extensive assertion that she belongs to him (Her. 20.135–78),21 Acontius returns to his point that the goddess will forgive Cydippe if only she avoids perjury (tantum periuria vita, Her. 20.185) by fulfilling her vow to marry him. Behind these reminders is the veiled threat that unless she acts in good faith (fide, Her. 20.180) she will never enjoy lasting good health (stabili potiere salute, Her. 20.179). Entirely absent in Acontius’ letter is any acknowledgment that Cydippe swore without knowing what she was doing. In this sense Cydippe is the opposite of Helen, who in joining Paris— willingly or not—knew exactly what she was getting into. By the same token, Acontius is Paris’ opposite in that while Cydippe senses her oath is the cause of her illness, Acontius knows for certain that it is: (hoc est, mihi crede, quod aegra / ipso nubendi tempore saepe iaces, Her. 20.109–10). While Paris was blundering, Acontius is calculating and manipulative and, in his focus on health, specifically along lines that cohere with the Augustan program. Acontius’ assertion that they will be well or be ill together, iuncta salus nostra est (Her. 20.233), is appropriate to the mythical context but is also a compelling argument for an allusion to the oath sworn by tota Italia in the crucial year before Actium,22 in which the health of the newly declared imperator Octavian is the very first concern addressed in the fragmentary oath.23 An implication in Acontius’ letter is that the salus of Octavian and of the republic alike may well have been in jeopardy largely because of Octavian’s refusal to yield to someone with prior claim, like Caesar’s magister equitum Antony. The situation in which Acontius finds himself is of his own making. Perhaps the same seemed true of Octavian at this remove, and hence an oblique

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suggestion that if he had not insisted on his own position as leader of the Roman state, there would have been no need for his drastic intervention to secure its “stable health” (Her. 20.179). Cydippe’s letter picks this up in its insistence that precisely because of Acontius’ choice of entrapment rather than persuasion, he in turn is left with far less than he bargained for, a pitiable body as the prize of his cleverness (sane miserabile corpus / ingenii . . . magna tropaea tui, Her. 21.213–14). Where Acontius’ letter attempts to separate his admittedly fraudulent behavior from the oath itself and the goddess who sponsors it, Cydippe permits no light between one concept and the other. Her letter is a fitting response to Acontius, expressing fear along with frustration and anger at her entrapment and emphasizing the effect his trickery has had both on her health and his own integrity.24 She confesses that, fearing another trap, she read through his letter without a sound lest her unknowing tongue swear an oath by some gods or other (sine murmure legi, / iuraret ne quos inscia lin­ gua deos, Her. 21.1–2). Even then, she read it through only for fear of further angering the goddess (Her. 21.5–6). While Acontius’ letter devotes a fair amount of attention to Cydippe’s existing fiancé, it is specifically in her response (Her. 21.37–54, 189–202) that we see the more consistent potential for resonance with the rivalry between Octavian and Antony. Employing the second person plural, Cydippe characterizes their conflicting claims as destroying her by their contest (certamine vestro / perditis, Her. 21.37–38). Cydippe shifts back and forth in her usage of second person singular and plural throughout her letter, making it unclear when she places blame solely on Acontius and when she assimilates her rival into the scenario. Stella Alekou sees this shift as marking an intensification of Cydippe’s accusation of Acontius alone as the sole responsible party, lending weight to a sense that here there is more than one actor at play.25 Cydippe depicts herself as a boat tossed by wind and wave (41–42) as long as neither of them will yield to the other (Dum neque tu cedis, nec se putat ille secundum, / tu votis obstas illius, ille tuis, Her. 21.39–40). Kenney notes that this focus on the existing fiancé is surely an Ovidian creation, and yet the question remains as to what that might mean. His view of the fiancé as “a stock literary figure, the elegiac rival, a source of jealous fantasizing”26 fits the genre in question but not the explicitness of the language Cydippe here uses: she is contested territory, and indeed the object of pitched battle.

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From Cydippe’s perspective the two rivals have opposing claims that are currently being tried in the court of public opinion in assessments of her illness: “One person contends that these things are happening by chance, and another denies that this man is accepted as my husband by the gods” (Accidere haec aliquis casu contendit, et alter / acceptum superis hunc negat esse virum, Her. 21.50–51). Cydippe and Acontius both know the real reason is neither chance nor divine disapproval of her fiancé but rather the oath he has tricked her into swearing. Nevertheless, she sees the rivals as working in tandem, having “set in motion harsh battles, with peace set aside” as a consequence of their actions (vos pace movetis / aspera submota proelia, Her. 21.53–54). Here the pointed focus on militaristic terms suggests she refers jarringly to the rivalry of the two men, as the cause of Cydippe’s suffering clearly does not have its origins in their conflicting claims over her. The fault lies fully at the feet of Acontius for the oath he has made her swear, and actual battles, proelia, are—unlike in the situation of Paris and Helen— nowhere on the horizon. What can explain such excessive and specific rhetoric?27 The idea of the two rivals in a deadlock over who comes first lends support to the poems’ recalling the conflict between Antony and Octavian. The original fiancé is here an Antony figure, the logical choice to succeed Julius Caesar who does not believe himself to be second in line (nec se putat ille secundum, 39). Acontius as the young interloper who arrives on the scene when all seemed to be settled suggests Octavian, who insists that the original chosen partner for his target is illegitimate in the eyes of the gods (accep­ tum superis hunc negat esse virum, 51). When we consider also that Cydippe insists that the option of persuasion was available to Acontius rather than force, the parallel gains additional support:28 Exordanda tibi, non capienda fui. Cur, me cum peteres, ea non profitenda putabas propter quae nobis ipse petendus eras? Cogere cur potius quam persuadere volebas, si poteram audita condicione capi? (Her. 21.128–32) I ought to have been won over by you, not captured. Why, when you were seeking me, did you not think it right to profess the reasons why you yourself should have been sought by me? Why did you wish to

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force rather than to persuade, if I could have been taken when the offer had been heard? What has been taken as evidence of Cydippe’s legal expertise,29 I see as an expression of regret and an important condition. Cydippe’s concluding si poteram audita condicione capi at line 132 suggests that she could not in fact have been convinced by Acontius’ offer, that he knew it, and that his choice to manipulate her oath was based on that understanding. While it is impossible to judge whether this is a veiled criticism of Augustus’ manner of taking charge of the republic, the suggestion is worth considering as explaining what seems otherwise inexplicable, especially in terms of the loggerheads at which the rivals, in Cydippe’s view, stubbornly find themselves. After pausing on the conflict between her rivals, Cydippe devotes extended attention to the oath Acontius tricked her into swearing (134–54), emphasizing again and again that she did not in fact swear—her mind was not in it30—but instead read the words of an oath: Non ego iuravi, legi iurantia verba (Her. 21.143).31 As with her presentation of Acontius and her financé’s contest for her as a military conflict, Cydippe again introduces a theme not present in her source, suggesting instead a parallel for the conquest of Rome under Augustus.32 Acontius may again use such tricks as he employed against her, she suggests, using a letter instead of an apple. In this way he could take away men’s wealth (magnas ditibus aufer opes, Her. 21.146), make kings swear to give him their kingdoms (fac iurent reges sua se tibi regna daturos, Her. 21.147), and indeed gain possession over whatever he wants in the entire world (sitque tuum, toto quidquid in orbe placet! Her. 21.148). Each of these items corresponds to an element of Augustus’ rule by the time the double letters were composed, as evidenced in his own summation of his achievements, the Res Gestae itself.33 While Augustus consistently downplayed the proscriptions required to fund the resettlement of veterans, he names the establishment of colonies among his accomplishments.34 He refers to his dominion over subject kings at RG 27 and again at 31–33, and his influence the world over at RG 3.1 (toto in orbe terrarum) in his own words, in addition to the introductory heading at 1.1 (orbem terrarum imperio populi Romani subiecit). Considered in this light, what Kenney sees as a reductio ad absurdum becomes less absurd and more pointed.35 Despite her barbed protests, though, it is clear Cydippe will submit, as she fears the wrath of

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Diana (151–54ff.) regardless of the sincerity of her oath. Her insistence that “I’ve not sinned at all, except that I read a false oath aloud” (Nil ego peccavi, nisi quod periuria legi, Her. 21.181) in the end counts for nothing. Once she has sworn there is no way out. In the end she may claim to surrender willingly to Acontius’ wishes, but only because she is conquered (doque libens victas in tua vota manus, Her. 21.240) not seduced.36 With no alternative, Cydippe might as well make the best of the situation; the same may well be true for a Rome that has turned itself over to Augustus. The recurrence of Augustus’ patron god Apollo at the close of Cydippe’s letter is also suggestive, and although Diana takes pride of place in the correspondence, the shadow of her brother lurks behind the scene.37 Cydippe brings him in directly, asking Diana to aid her in her suffering, urging her to “give the health-bringing aid of your brother to me” (daque salutiferam iam mihi fratris opem, Her. 21.174). This appeal emphasizes her desperation but also calls to mind the futility of Apollo’s aid, and in fact his responsi­ bility for a heroine’s suffering, in Oenone’s letter to Paris. It is no surprise, given the outcome of this story, that this plea falls on deaf ears. Apollo returns to the fore in Cydippe’s report that Apollo’s oracle at Delphi is being consulted as to what will heal her (Her. 21.231–32). In the final analysis, it is this deus et vates (Her. 21.235) who has the last word regarding her oath rather than his sister, the nominally aggrieved party. The message the oracle gives is not only that Cydippe must in fact marry her deceiver but that Apollo also feels aggrieved by her noncompliance: “Wandering rumor whispers that he, too, complains—as a witness to the oath—that he considers his own faith to have been neglected” (Is quoque nescioquam, nunc ut vaga fama susurrat, / neglectam queritur testis habere fidem, Her. 21.233–34). If a victimized Cydippe is presented as a parallel for Roman citizens, Apollo is here presented as aware that they are only reluctant participants in the res publica restituta. As is the case with all of the Heroides, moreover, we know the outcome: Cydippe will stick with Acontius because her only other alternative is death. The fundamental message in her letter, though, is that Cydippe will adhere to her oath not because she wants to but because she has no choice. If we think of this episode as a look back across the span of a generation to the original oath sworn to the young Octavian, we are left with yet another discouraging picture of the sort the Heroides collection as a whole may suggest.

Coda

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If my reading is legitimate, or at least granted to be plausible, it provides all the more reason why the double letters should be most appropriately considered as fruits of the exile period,38 or even as a posthumous publi­ cation: it would no doubt be best for a poet hoping for recall not to risk a critique of this sort coming to the attention of the only person who could grant it. Such a conclusion to the Heroides collection, read in such a light, again leaves more disturbing questions for Ovid’s readers—both his contemporaries and ours—about whether the bargain Rome’s citizens struck with Augustus was entered into freely, or was worth the price. In a sense this end to my study proposes an unexpected answer to the rhetorical question Heyworth asks in his study of the authenticity of the double letters: “What finer demonstration of independence and defiance could have been accomplished by the poet exiled for encouraging adultery in the Ars Amatoria than the composition of an exchange of letters between the most famous pair of adulterers in ancient myth?”39 The answer I suggest here is that it would have been an even finer demonstration to have crafted the exchange between Paris and Helen, and its capstone letter pair between Acontius and Cydippe, in a way that takes a profoundly critical view of both the outcome and premise of the entire Augustan enterprise. Looking back across the decades that witnessed the rise of Octavian and consolidation of the principate, especially from the vantage of exile, may well have solidified concerns the poet was beginning to explore in a tentative fashion in the single Heroides. Whether this is the case or not, in any event the hermeneutic alibi could keep him cold comfort in Tomis. Ovid could always claim that he was simply engaging in literary games and was not attempting, as Elena Giusti puts it, “to highlight the fictionality of the whole construct, and thus to unmask the construct” of Augustanism and its flaws by means of mythological heroes behaving badly.40 Perhaps, though, what we see in the Heroides collection as a whole and consolidated in the double letters in particular is Ovid’s attempt to complicate even further the discourse around Augustanism that he engaged in throughout his career and that continues to intrigue us to this day.

Notes

Introduction 1. On the period preceding Ovid as making the principate, or something like it, nearly inevitable, see, especially, Meier (1993) and, more recently, Farrell and Nelis (2013). Scholars are, however, encouraging reconsideration of this premise, in particular through looking at the period through different lenses; see, especially, the collection of Morrell, Osgood, and Welch (2019). For a brief reminder of Rome’s status during Ovid’s early years, see Kearsley (2013). My general approach in this study is to cite scholars minimally on historical matters for which a general consensus exists, confining myself rather to essential overviews, points of contention, or brief discussions that I deem of particular importance to my argument. 2. On this period, Osgood (2006) is indispensable for my thinking. For a summary of the most important bibliography immediately following Osgood, see Farrell and Nelis (2013), 3 n. 6. 3. The bibliography on this point is enormous. Particularly influential on my reading are the now classic collection of Raaflaub and Toher (1993) on the gradual evolution of the principate—itself an homage to the landmark study of Syme (1939)—and, especially, Osgood (2006) on the preconditions for the principate’s development. For a brief synthesis of the process, see Eder (2005). 4. Millar (1993), 1. 5. I use the term advisedly, in the mode of Rantala (2019), 184: “What essentially makes Augustan poets ‘Augustan’ is the simple fact that they lived during his reign and wrote poems which can be seen as responses to the spirit of the times.” The first part of this definition is unquestioned for Ovid; the second, as I hope to show, is apt for the Heroides as well as Ovid’s later works. 6. Farrell and Nelis (2013), 4. 7. On this transitional period and the proscriptions in particular, see the excellent brief account of Milnor (2005), 187–94, which emphasizes its effect on Roman private, as well as public, life. 125

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Notes to Pages 5–6

8. The fundamental discussion is that of Kennedy (1997). More recently Davis (2006), 9–22, has contested Kennedy’s position, but see also the important and nuanced contribution to this debate of Giusti (2016). On the ambiguity of Ovid’s response to Augustus, Hinds (1987) is indispensable. 9. Ovidian scholarship has looked chiefly to the Metamorphoses for commentary on contemporary concerns. For a notable example of this kind of analysis of the Metamorphoses, see Feldherr (2010). Serious investigation into the Ars and Remedia includes the important early piece by Sharrock (1994), 99, who decries the continuing tradition of reading “Ovid as essentially apolitical and his early poetry as ‘literary wit’ unconnected with the serious business of Roman society.” Davis’ (2006) collection investigating political engagement in Ovid’s erotic poetry attempts a corrective and includes a chapter on the Heroides, but little else has been done. 10. I follow Knox (1995), 6, in his evaluation of the chronology of the single Heroides: the collection “antedates the second edition of the Amores (c. 2 BC), and probably the first (c. 16 BC).” Thorsen has since argued that firm dating for any of Ovid’s early works is simply not possible. She identifies and dates the entire early corpus (2014), 29: “the single Heroides, the Amores, the Medicamina, the Ars Ama­ toria, and the Remedia Amoris, all composed before ca. 2 A.D.” The double letters are another question, though, and the most recent scholarship on their dating places them in the exile period; see the compelling arguments of Heyworth (2015) and Thorsen (2018). 11. On elegy’s short life span, see Miller (2004b) on elegy in general and Barchiesi (1999) on the Heroides specifically as capping the genre’s floruit. 12. A point suggested by Casali (1992), 89–90. 13. Rosenmeyer (1997), 47. 14. The dating of the double-letter collection is not firmly established. See the discussion of Kenney (1996), 25, and Hintermeier (1993), 190–95, Michalopoulos (2006), 1 n. 2, and now Thorsen (2018), 257–58. A good recent discussion that places the composition of the double letters in the exile period itself is that of Heyworth (2015). 15. Thus I read Ovid’s works as a part of a whole, themselves making a carmen perpetuum that McGowan (2009), 152, calls a “trans-historical continuum.” In this I follow a trend that sees Ovid’s works as insistently self-referential, the implications of which have been articulated by Thorsen (2014), 9: “Ovid incessantly connects these works by means of explicit references and subtler allusions, thus insisting that these works should be read together.” While Thorsen here refers specifically to the early poetry of Ovid, I see this process at play throughout the entire corpus. 16. Rosenmeyer (1997), 29–30. 17. Nicolet (1988) and the classic study of Sherwin-White (1939). 18. Gleason (1995), Gunderson (2000), and Richlin (1997). 19. Fear (2000), 236.



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20. Milnor (2005), 3. 21. So Rosenmeyer (1997), 29–30. 22. In this latter point I am especially influenced by Osgood (2006), and for elegy more specifically, by Fear (2000), 238: “The success of elegy as a literary form produced in the transition from republic to principate testifies to the ability of this genre to resonate strongly in its historical context. . . . The readiness of a Roman audience/readership to identify with elegy’s narrative may have indicated a willingness on the part of a Roman population wearied by constant civil war and disruption to be seduced dulcedine otii even if such an affair with otium promised to be potentially masochistic.” 23. I consider Laudamia and Protesilaus too marginal to the overall plot of the Trojan cycle to feature as part of this study. Further, that letter bears a striking resemblance to Propertius 4.3, so ably discussed by Janan (2001), 53–69, that it seems not to need further explication here. 24. Farrell and Nelis (2013), 17. Their collection, which focuses on the uses of poetry for historical commentary, tellingly includes studies of Ovid that address only the Fasti and the Metamorphoses. 25. See above, p. 5, n. 8. 26. Greene (2000), Miller (2004b), 130–59, Drinkwater (2012). 27. Skinner (1993), 109. On Roman masculinity more broadly, especially as it pertains to Catullus as the precursor of elegy, see Manwell (2007), with additional bibliography. 28. Wyke (2002), 176. 29. The literature on the elegiac persona and his relationship to the actual poet is vast. An excellent overview is provided by Miller (2010), 46–66. 30. Here, too, the literature is vast, and again Miller (2004b) has been especially influential on my thinking. 31. This is what Hinds (1987), 26, reprinted at Knox (2006), 45, has famously labeled Ovid’s “hermeneutic alibi.” 32. Jacobson (1974) remains the most systematic study of the letters, with Verducci (1985) as another early investigation of multiple letters. The individual pieces that have influenced me most profoundly are Kennedy (1984), Barchiesi (1987, 1992b), Hinds (1993), Smith (1994), and Farrell (1998). 33. Lindheim (2003) reads of the Heroides from the Lacanian perspective of feminine desire as it intersects with epistolary convention. 34. Spentzou (2003) in particular reads the women as boldly reappropriating their own stories. 35. Fulkerson (2005) investigates the intratextual relationships among the letters, seeing the imagined authors as learning—or failing to—from their fellow writers’ missives.

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Notes to Pages 9–13

36. Davis (2006), 49–70, discusses three of the Heroides in terms of their focus on marriage as a critique of Augustan policy, examining in particular (2006), 49, how “the poet focuses not on the glories of masculine achievement, but on its cost.” 37. I follow Giusti (2016), who reminds us that we need not slip into aporia at the totalizing effect of Augustanism, 22, “but rather that we must always be conscious of the fact that the Augustan revolution often makes the languages of dissent and consent appear indistinguishable.” 38. Giusti (2016), 29. 39. I am grateful to an anonymous reader of the text both for the term “composite” for describing the Heroides’ authorship and for the invitation to think through this concept and its implications for my study more explicitly. 40. See, especially, Rosenmeyer’s keen assessment (1997), 29 and n. 5. 41. See Björk (2016). This is not to denigrate a rhetorical approach to the Heroi­ des: while we can learn much of value by studying the poems as rhetorical exempla, the fictional letters have value also as documenting social history at a crucial time in Rome’s political transformation. 42. On a smaller scale, see the discussion of Davis (2006), 62–68. 43. For this approach applied to epistolary elegy specifically, see Janan (2001), 53–69, on Propertius 4.3, the letter from Arethusa to Lycotas. 44. Miller (2004b). 45. I borrow the term from Casali (1992), 88. 46. Lively (2008), Bolton (2009), and Gardner (2013). 47. I borrow both the term and the concept of the “resisting reader” from Fetterley (1978). 48. Kennedy (2000). 49. Here I mean “reading more” in the mode of Casali (1997). Chapter 1. Narrative Interrupted 1. Miller sums up the communis opinio as follows: “As everyone knows, Heroi­ des 7 is a failure” (2004a), 57. While Miller retrieves the poem from such a dismal assessment, he is correct that the poem has not been appreciated or even particularly widely studied. The bibliography on Heroides 7 is shockingly sparse consid­ ering its interaction with Rome’s most famous work of literature. In addition to the bibliography collected by Miller (2004a), Kuhlmann (2003), Lindheim (2003), Spentzou (2003), Casali (2005), Fulkerson (2005), Habermehl (2006), and Schiesaro (2008) remain the few more recent items. 2. Jacobson (1974), 90: “In this poem we hear not simply Dido struggling with Aeneas, but Ovid waging war against Vergil; and he is doomed to defeat from the start because of his incapacity and unwillingness to appreciate the Vergilian position.” Kuhlmann (2003), 256, provides an important caution against this view,



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noting the unlikelihood of a poet like Ovid so misconstruing such a significant, near-contemporary poem. 3. Farrell, for example, focuses on the heroines as “speaking from the heart” (1998), 318, as opposed to the role of the author in creating such convincing monologues for them. Miller (2004a) addresses this concern, but his focus is on the fragmented speaking persona of Dido rather than on the author behind her. 4. On the Heroides as recitation pieces that could be sung to suitors, see Ars am. 3.345, on which see, especially, Gibson (2003), ad loc. 5. Desmond (1993), 57. 6. Desmond (1993), 58. 7. All citations of Virgil are from the text of Mynors (1969). 8. Desmond (1993), 65. Schiesaro (2008), 220, identifies Ovid as “always a partial and interested—in a word: polemical—reader of Virgil” following Thomas (2001), but keeps to questions of Dido’s motivations in the letter vis-à-vis Aeneas rather than Ovid’s motivations vis-à-vis the message of the Aeneid. 9. Barchiesi (1986, 1987). Schiesaro (2008), 213–26, on the other hand, sees Dido’s letter primarily as rhetorical posturing that aims to keep Aeneas in Carthage. See also Liveley (2008) on the Heroides as paraquels, or potential stories alongside canonical narratives. 10. For a discussion of Ovid’s heroines as “resisting readers” of their own previous literary experiences, see Spentzou (2003). 11. Knox (1995), 202. Schiesaro (2008), 226, also notes that “the letter lends itself to be read as a large-scale indictment of Aeneas’—and the Aeneid’s—values system” but confines himself to the personal (i.e., the abandonment of Creusa) rather than the political. 12. Jacobson (1974), 80. Schiesaro (2008) elaborates on this line of thought. 13. Jacobson (1974), 91. 14. Shumate (2005). On Rome as a “nation” in this period, see the remarks of Osgood (2006), 364–68. 15. Toll (1997), 34. 16. Shumate (2005), 84. On the importance of Carthage in the forging of Rome’s national identity as early as the middle republic and culminating in the DidoAeneas episode in the Aeneid, see now Giusti (2018). 17. Feldherr (1999), 105. 18. Miller (2004a), 59, with reference especially to Barchiesi (2001) and Farrell (1998). Although Miller does consider the author behind the poems (2004a), 66, he retreats quickly to Dido and the impossibility of her omniscience, of her being in “control of this vast web of allusion and intertextuality.” 19. Miller (2004a), 58. 20. Miller (2004a), 60–61.

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Notes to Pages 16–20

21. Desmond (1993), 57. 22. Hexter (1992), 352. 23. Schiesaro (2008), 213, notes this phenomenon on the literary rather than political plane in relation to the Aeneid, “whose potential meanings [Ovid] activates and magnifies while proceeding to distance and differentiate his own take on the story.” On protonationalism in Roman poetry, see Shumate (2005). 24. So Miller (2004a), 58, and Davis (2006), 63. 25. Desmond (1993), 60. 26. In addition to the studies already cited, the commentaries of Palmer (1898), Knox (1995), and Piazzi (2007) are key. 27. I am grateful to Laurel Fulkerson for her help in the formulation of this point. 28. Mercury’s visit occurs at Aen. 4.262–64. 29. As Palmer notes at line 7, he is certus eundi (4.554) and tenebat certus iter (5.2), while she is certa mori (4.564). See also Piazzi (2007), ad loc. For a more doubtful reading of the certainty of Dido’s death from the start of Heroides 7, see Habermehl (2006), 88, citing Anderson and Walde. 30. Palmer, Knox, and Piazzi all make this choice. Habermehl (2006), 74, reads these questions as evidence of Dido’s aggression against Aeneas. 31. Noted also by Desmond (1993), 64, in other instances, who observes that Dido “acknowledges and simultaneously deflates” elements of the Aeneid, such as the vulnus of love and the literal vulnus that will kill her. 32. So also Habermehl (2006), 76, and Davis (2006), 65. 33. So Knox, ad loc., and so, too, Davis (2006), 63–64, although he rightly notes that Dido herself was such a person, having been willing to hand over her own lands to Aeneas. 34. Noted by Kuhlmann (2003), 260. 35. So Habermehl (2006), 83–84. 36. Williams (1972), ad loc. 37. Noted by Kuhlmann (2003), 260, with the additional reminder that Dido will soon (Her. 7.74–80) obliquely accuse Aeneas of violating his Virgilian pietas by putting his Penates and his son unnecessarily at risk. 38. I understand this line much as does Knox (1995), ad loc., who translates observem as “to watch for an opportunity,” that is, for a safer departure. 39. Ovid here, then, returns to his play on the notion of Aeneas’ fixedness of purpose: the times of departure must be right (temporibus certis, 170) and he must leave only when he is more certain (certior, 173) either of his success, the timeliness of his departure, or of his own purpose. 40. As noted by Piazzi (2007), ad loc. 41. It is, of course, possible that in the time between Aeneas and Dido’s confrontation and Mercury’s visit to Aeneas that the winds have changed; in any event the



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differences between the Virgilian and Ovidian versions point to a specific tension between the texts. 42. Habermehl (2006), 79, sees Dido’s deployment of mutabilis as a correction of Mercury’s assessment of her and a critique of masculine inflexibility: the problem is not that she is fickle but that Aeneas does not know how to bend to necessity. On Ovid’s reuse of robur here, see Piazzi (2007), 27–28, and Schiesaro (2008), 215. Such concentration of allusions to a wide span of his source text in one tight spot in the Heroides is a consistent pattern throughout Ovid’s letters; for this phenomenon in Briseis’ letter 3, see below, chapter 3. 43. See, however, the commentary of O’Hara (2012), ad loc., for comparisons of this simile to those that usually depict the tree as falling. 44. The words Ovid’s Dido reuses here from her Virgilian counterpart, moreover, also nod to the elegiac genre in which she now finds herself: both obstinacy (duritia) and charges that she is fickle (mutabilis) are routinely leveled against the amator’s puella in traditional Roman love elegy. Here instead it is the epic hero Aeneas who stands accused of these qualities. I thank Erika Zimmermann Damer for this suggestion. 45. Starks (1999), 269, notes other ancient authors who see Dido as deceitful here: Timaeus, Trogus/Justin, and later, Appian and Servius. His discussion of Servius is especially perceptive, noting that Servius is clearly uncomfortable with Virgil’s removal of this aspect of Dido’s tradition. 46. So Jacobson (1974), 80. Piazzi (2007), ad loc., is slightly more charitable, attributing Dido’s elision of the bull hide trick here to her rhetorical strategy of portraying herself as a helpless victim rather than a shrewd strategist in her plan to acquire additional territory. 47. So, again, Starks (1999), 270. 48. Starks (1999), 270. 49. So Knox (1995), ad loc., citing Aen. 4.541–42: necdum / Laomedonteae sentis periuria gentis? 50. See Starks (1999), 257ff., especially page 264, where he notes that Ovid’s treatment of Dido in both Heroides 7 and Fast. 3.543ff. “continues to build on Vergil’s theme of Dido tragically abandoned by a faithless Aeneas.” On how Virgil prepares his audience for the role of deceit in the Dido and Aeneas episode, see Bednarowski (2015), with further bibliography. 51. Feldherr (1999), 101, notes that Dido and Aeneas “meet not so much as individuals, much less former lovers, but as representatives of their respective nations. She is the Phoenician Dido, while he, throughout the encounter, is made to act as ‘the Trojan hero.’” 52. Starks (1999), 263: “Vergil . . . directs readers from the beginning to respond to the Punic woman Dido as the antithesis of many (though not all) Roman impressions of her race.”

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Notes to Pages 23–26

53. Starks (1999), 274–75, especially on ambire, 4.283; dolos, 4.296; dissumulare, 4.305; perfidus, 4.305, 4.366, 4.373; periurus, 4.542. On the composition time of this and other Heroides letters, see especially Kennedy (1984) and Drinkwater (2007). 54. On the other hand, Starks (1999), 276, points out that this terminology of Aeneas’ Punic faithlessness—here fides Aeneia rather than fides Punica—is itself condensed into 120 lines, which might suggest instead that Ovid is roughly paralleling the episode, but that without the wider context of the Aeneid it seems a much more targeted attack. So Desmond (1993), 60, emphasizes “the lack of narrative context” and the nature of the composition: “As a 198-line declamation, Heroides 7 allows Dido to indulge her passion to a much greater extent than is allowed Vergil’s Dido.” 55. Conversely, this condensation also permits Ovid to downplay Dido’s more heinous threats to Aeneas, such as chopping him up like Medea did to her brother or serving Aeneas Ascanius for dinner (4.600–602). 56. Starks (1999), 268, following Monti (1981), who notes Dido’s portrayal as a proper Roman dynast. The portrayal of Aeneas as the unreliable outsider in contrast with an honorable, and thus more Roman, Carthaginian Dido also casts him in contrast as decidedly un-Roman: see the brief discussion of Rantala (2019), 191–92. 57. As noted by Schiesaro (2008), 214. 58. As Ovid’s Dido knows and will indicate at lines 83–84. 59. So Knox (1995), ad loc. (214), citing Aen. 1.353–54. He also notes the similarity to the visit of Creusa’s shade, and those of Hector (Aen. 2.270–97) and Anchises (Aen. 4.351–53, 6.695–96), but not the confrontation between Dido’s shade and Aeneas. 60. Lines (22, 31–32, 97–97a, 107–8, 167–68); noted by Knox (1995), 214. Mercury’s scornful insistence at Aen. 4.266 that Aeneas is serving his wife’s (uxoris) interests rather than his own destiny complicates matters as well. On this ambiguity, see Miller (2004a), 62–63. 61. On the sanguinolenta imago at 69, see Knox (1995), 214, and Jacobson (1974), 85–86. 62. So Knox (1995), ad loc. 63. Habermehl (2006), 80 and 92, also sees Ovid’s Dido as picking up on doubts cast in the Aeneid about the hero’s abandonment of Creusa. 64. Here, then, I follow Dörrie (1971), 140, and Knox (1995), 214, rather than Jacobson (1974), 86 n. 20, or Piazzi (2007), ad loc. Knox also notes the similarity to the ghost of Sychaeus and states that this passage reminds us of Aeneas’ other ghostly visits in the Aeneid. 65. Davis (2006), 65–66, notes that Dido’s perspective here is devoid of the contemporary “ambiguity” surrounding Aeneas’ responsibility for Creusa’s death but does not comment on whether we are meant to consider whether Aeneas was in



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fact being untruthful. On the Heroides’ Penelope as questioning the truth of her source text, see the discussion below in chapter 2. 66. This is not to assert, however, that Dido’s version of events in Heroides 7 is necessarily true, or even truer than that of the Aeneid. See Giusti (2018), 283, on how the Carthage episode fundamentally “highlights the degree of fiction” in the debate over whether Dido or Aeneas is the positive figure and how that plays into Virgil’s position either in favor of or subverting Augustan ideology by “unmasking the construct, and the ideology itself, for the artificial forgery that it really is.” 67. See Hexter (1992), 338–42, on Virgil’s version of Dido’s tale as the canonical one, despite a preexisting alternate tradition. Piazzi (2007), 30, on the other hand, rightly notes that “in questo caso il testo epico manca l’avallo della voce autoriale che dall’esterno garantisca la vericita’ del racconto.” 68. Keith (2000), 118, sees Creusa’s “freely accepting the necessity of her own death” to enable Aeneas’ mission as part and parcel of Roman epic’s treatment of women. See also Homans (1987), 157, on this episode as emblematic of the role of women in literature more generally. 69. And indeed, as Desmond (1993), 61, points out, Virgil “adumbrates the unstated implications of Aeneid 2: that Aeneas himself tells Dido (haec mihi narraras) of his behavior toward his wife.” Ovid shines light on just these spots that Virgil introduces only in the shadows of his narrative. 70. So Keith (2000), 75. 71. On this question, see, briefly, Bednarowski (2015), 142–43. 72. See especially Knox (1995), ad loc. 73. As Schiesaro (2008), 214, puts it in terms of the poem’s psychological realism: “Ovid works . . . by alternately compressing and expanding Virgil’s narrative.” 74. Hexter (1992), 336. 75. On fama in Virgil, see, recently, Hardie (2012), 78–125, and Syson (2013). 76. Hexter (1992), 352. 77. Hexter (1992), 354. 78. Habermehl (2006), 81, also notes the vagueness of the Aeneid on this point, in contrast with Ovid’s specificity, as does Piazzi (2007), ad loc. 79. Kennedy (1984), 103. 80. Knox (1995), ad loc. Miller (2004a), 71, follows Knox’s suggestion, reading the auctor here as Virgil; contra Piazzi (2007), ad loc. More recently and generally, see the discussion of Barchiesi (2013), esp. 196–97. 81. So Davis (2006), 67 and n. 39, following Spentzou (2003). I do not agree, however, with his suggestion that Ovid’s Dido can claim (2006), 68, “to be more authoritative than the Aeneid itself.” 82. Ziogas (2015), 118. His conclusion, 130, that “the significant term auctor is the critical point where the authorities of the prince and the poets converge and collide” is precisely what makes it an ideal locus for veiled criticism.

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Notes to Pages 33–37

83. Ziogas (2015), 119. This piece discusses Ovid’s challenging Augustus’ “authority” chiefly in the Tristia, but I suggest, contra his assertions on 129 that “Augustus is absent from Ovid’s first steps in the poetric arena,” that its observations are relevant for Heroides 7 as well. 84. On the possible meanings and implications of dulcis amor here, see Feldherr (1999), 105–6. 85. This point of commonality is, to my knowledge, largely unnoticed by scholars; Kennedy (1984), 420, alone suggests the fruitfulness of such an investigation. 86. Keith (2000), 116, sees in this passage Aeneas’ denial of “any knowledge of or responsibility for Dido’s death,” although his language here seems to imply that a messenger did come to him with news of her suicide—and that he chose not to believe it. 87. The script becomes even more troubling when we realize that these words also imitate Catullus 66 as Berenice’s lock regrets its departure from her head. On the interpretations of this allusion, see Feldherr (1999), 108–11, who sees it as part of the interplay of generic registers that complicates our interpretation of Dido and Aeneas’ encounter. On the necessity of female death in Latin epic, see Keith (2000), 101–31, especially 112–19 on Dido, and Perkell (1981), 370. On script-following in the Heroides, see also chapter 5 of this study. 88. So Kennedy (1984), 420. 89. So Gardner (2013) observes on male and female time in elegy more generally. In the elegy of Heroides 7, that is, Dido is trapped in a static moment on the brink of death, whereas in the Aeneid she is condemned to a timeless existence in the underworld while Aeneas instead moves forward in the world of the living, following a linear progression in the male, teleological time frame of epic. 90. Here Feldherr (1999), 107, sees the possibility that “since nowhere in the course of books 5 and 6 has any such message been mentioned, the reader may easily transfer Aeneas’ doubts about this fictional nuntius to the ‘report’ offered by Vergil’s poem,” pointing readers to Zetzel (1989). It is equally possible that Heroides 7, in the mind of its creator, is conceived of as just this missing nuntius that Aeneas found so hard to accept as verus. On the points of origin of the Heroides as residing in their source texts’ preoccupation with message sending, see Drinkwater (2007). 91. In this Aeneas is consistent with his departure from Carthage, where he wished to console Dido and bewailed his enforced departure: lenire dolentem / solando cuit et dictis avertere curas, / multa gemens magnoque animum labefactus amore / iussa tamen divum exsequitur classemqu revisit (Aen. 4.394–96). 92. A prefiguration noted by Piazzi (2007), ad loc., following Kennedy (1984), 420. 93. As Andrew Feldherr (1999), 101, notes, “The more carefully and precisely the poem attempts to define and describe Dido, to fix her within the narrative, the more she slips away.”



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94. Feldherr (1999), 115. On this episode as typical of the silencing of female characters in the Aeneid, see Feldherr (1999), 103, citing Nugent (1992) in n. 46. 95. Her. 7.102. 96. Feldherr (1999), 104–5. 97. As Habermehl (2006), 89, would have it, Ovid’s Dido “hat das letzte Wort” by offering no words at all. 98. Desmond (1993), 58. 99. Habermehl (2006), 93, comes to a similar conclusion, namely that Virgil may have relished the way Ovid presented his Dido, but he doubts Augustus would feel the same way. Similarly, he suggests (2006), 74, that Heroides 7 highlights “den blutigen Weg zum Imperium Romanum.” 100. On the terminology of “Augustan” and “anti-Augustan” and their utility or lack thereof, see Kennedy (1997). 101. Toll (1991), 5–6. Chapter 2. Viscera nostra 1. As Barchiesi (2001), 144, rightly cautions, imitation of or borrowing from an earlier text does not make the earlier text the true version: “Allusions are combinations of two texts both needing interpretation, with each interpreting the other, not the combination of one text already ‘closed’ and another still ‘open.’” A step beyond this important contribution can be supplied by Felson-Rubin’s (1994), 141, emphasis on the “interactional model of interpretation, the dialogic model,” offered through the “nonhierarchical experience of a listener” of the Odyssey; this interactional model applies to Ovid’s audiences for the Heroides as well, both his contemporaries and our own, through their intimate familiarity with his source texts, the lens through which we inevitably see, measure, and evaluate Ovid’s own versions. 2. Felson-Rubin (1994), 141. 3. In support of such readings, see Farrell and Nelis (2013), 17, along with rele­ vant individual entries in their collection. 4. Davis (2006), 49–70, is the chief exception. He examines the Heroides as critiques of an Augustan ideology that centers on the regulation of female sexuality rather than as a larger response to the backdrop of civil war. 5. Jacobson (1974), 246. 6. As Fear (2000), 234–38, documents, already under Caesar the exclusion from meaningful political activity had begun to be felt, which only increased under Augustus. This tension, as I will argue below in chapter 3, is also a major concern for Briseis in Heroides 3. 7. Rosenmeyer (1997), 30. I will return to this point below in my discussion of Heroides 1 and the exile poetry. 8. See Phillips (1997) and, more recently, Hurlet (2011).

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Notes to Pages 42–44

9. See, most recently, Peachin (2015). I am grateful to Emily Master for her guidance on Augustus’ approach to legislation. 10. Holzberg (2002), 73, perhaps following Spoth’s brief discussion (1992), 33–34. 11. Rosenmeyer (1997), 29, proposes such a parallel: Ovid’s “exile is an odd instance of life imitating art: the exile poetry, as a one-sided correspondence, most closely imitates the single epistles.” 12. On Penelope’s weaving here as recalling her ruse in Homer, see Barchiesi (1992a), 70–71, and Knox (1995), 90–91. 13. The literature on the res publica restituta and how Augustus achieved it is vast. Two examples I have found especially influential in the development of my ideas are the now classic collection of Raaflaub and Toher (1993) and Osgood (2006). 14. Explored by Felson-Rubin (1994). 15. As noted by Jacobson (1974), 255, and Barchiesi (1992a), 79–80. 16. As Palmer’s text reads. Barchiesi (1992a) prefers facta, noting ad loc. the resonance with “Celebrazioni delle gesta, κλέα ἀνδρῶν” that make up epic, a reading that is particularly attractive given Penelope’s preceding reference to the activities of the Greeks at Troy. The description here also closely parallels that of Achilles during the dramatic point of composition of Heroides 3: when the embassy of Odysseus, Phoenix, and Ajax finds him in Iliad 9, he is singing the κλέα ἀνδρῶν (9.189) and accompanying himself with a cithara; see the discussion below in chapter 3. 17. I am grateful to Micaela Janan for suggesting another possibility: Ovid may here refer to reports of men who were not significant enough to draw Homer’s attention. 18. Boyd (2017), 195, astutely notes the epic and elegiac contrast here in Ovid’s play with meter: Penelope “imagines Homeric settings for these songs and uses the hexameter to depict warriors entertaining their audiences at the banquet table. . . . As she moves to the pentameter, however, these Homeric feasts are transformed into the dinner parties of Roman elegy, at which adulterous wives and their lovers communicate by ‘writing’ with wine on the table,” listing in n. 45 parallels of seductive wine communications in Ovid and other elegists. 19. Another possible source of information will present itself soon enough (lines 59ff.), although not of the sort Penelope describes to Ulysses at lines 29ff. 20. As Knox (1995), 96–97, also notes: “Strictly interpreted her words te quaerere misso are not false, since he was indeed sent to seek word of his father, but by Athena, not her.” 21. Knox (1995), 97, cites as evidence that “at Od. 18.257–73 Penelope is lying when she reports Odysseus’ injunction to her to marry.” For a more nuanced view of Homer’s Penelope, see Felson-Rubin (1994). 22. See Davis (2006), 67, on the dangers of assuming the prior narrative is the correct one.



Notes to Pages 45–52

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23. Noted by Viarre (1987), 9. As Jessica Westerhold has pointed out to me in correspondence, the acoustic echo of Dolona (39) further emphasizes the hero’s association with trickery. 24. Ovid here responds to what Felson-Rubin (1994), 144, calls the reader’s “exchange of winks with Homer,” noting the embedded questions of authorial reliability, and thus narrative authority in Ovid’s source text. 25. This idea is further developed in the discussion below of letters 16 and 17, chapter 5. 26. If indeed the passage in question is Homeric; Iliad 10’s Doloneia has been among the most fiercely disputed section of the Homeric epics for generations. On the questionable primacy of source texts, see especially Barchiesi (2001), 142–44. 27. Barchiesi (1992a), 80. 28. We would expect rather the kind of concern Penelope expresses at Her. 1.11– 22 when the name of each fallen Greek makes her tremble with fear for Ulysses. 29. For the association of Rome and Troy in Augustan poetry, see Hardie (2013). 30. See the commentary of Coleman (1977) and recently that of Cucchiarelli (2012). For a brief contribution on the allegorical potential of this episode, see Winterbottom (1976). 31. Schwindt (2013), 46. 32. Knox (1995), 99. 33. Knox (1995), 100. 34. So, for example, Thomas (1988), ad loc., who notes the term’s use for Octavian also in Ec. 1, discussed above. 35. Nelis (2013), 256, goes so far as to link everso . . . saeclo specifically with “the period leading up to the Battle of Actium,” thus embedding the reference in Penelope’s letter more closely to Ovid’s sociopolitical context. 36. On the vexed question of the identity of this “Gallus,” see Heyworth (2007b), 99, with further bibliography. 37. Citations of Propertius are from the text of Heyworth (2007a). 38. As Breed (2009), 35, comments, this poem contains “a concise but capacious statement of what Roman civil war represents. Its effects cannot be confined within the city, but spill out into Italy, enveloping participants and victims indiscriminately.” 39. Richardson (1977), 209: “Perusia was a hill town, the arable land lying in the valleys below it.” 40. Barchiesi (1992a), 85. 41. A similar concern is expressed in Heroides 3, where Briseis reminds Achilles that utile dicebas ipse fuisse capi (3.53), discussed below in chapter 3. 42. Osgood (2006), depicts the eventual embrace of Octavian by Rome’s remaining citizens as more a matter of exhausted capitulation than acceptance of a savior of the state.

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Notes to Pages 52–57

43. Rosenmeyer (1997), 47, is fundamental on Ovid’s use of “feminisation” and a “resulting fluidity of identities to enunciate views and feelings he would be at a loss to express in his own male, Roman voice.” In this Penelope may make a particularly apt foil; Felson-Rubin (1994), 58–59, notes the fluidity of gender roles in Penelope and Odysseus’ questioning scene in Odyssey 19. 44. A reading that seems to be supported by Ovid’s use of viscera at Tristia 1.7.19– 20 to describe his books, as noted by Hinds (1985, reprinted at Knox 2006, 430). 45. Jacobson (1974), 269. 46. Knox (1995), 106. 47. OLD viscus, 2. 48. OLD viscus, 4. 49. OLD viscus, 1b. 50. I am grateful to an anonymous reader for the press for encouraging me to think through this point in greater depth. 51. Kennedy (1984), 417: “The purported time of composition is the very eve of the slaying of the suitors.” See also Knox (1995), 87. 52. On the significance of the shared epistolary form of the Heroides and Tristia, see Rosenmeyer (1997), 30–45. 53. All citations of the Tristia are from the text of Owen (1915). 54. Ovid uses the phrase si licet exemplis in parvo grandibus uti (Trist. 1.3.25) in his comparison of his own wife, first with Penelope and then with the femina prin­ ceps Livia at 1.6.28, on which see below. 55. Here I take up the suggestion of Rosenmeyer (1997), 29, that “the Heroides may be read as letters from exile, epistulae ex exilio in which Ovid pursues his fascination with the genre of letters and the subject of abandonment through literary characters; the Tristia take that fascination one step further as the author himself, in letters to loved ones, writes from the position of an abandoned hero of sorts.” I explore this idea in greater depth in chapter 4. 56. As Huskey (2002), 88–89, points out. 57. Hinds (1985, reprinted at Knox 2006), 438. As Hinds also puts it (1985, reprinted at Knox 2006), 437, the poet’s earlier work “can be redeployed, can be rewritten, to reflect the circumstances of Ovid’s exile.” 58. Hinds (1999), 124–25, discusses Tristia 5.14.35–42 as another list of faithful women to whom his wife is compared; here Penelope is the last heroine mentioned as opposed to the first in 1.6. 59. On Ovid’s process of revising his own works, see Martelli (2013). 60. See, especially, McGowan (2009), 169–201. 61. Textual uncertainty prints these lines in different orders. 62. Johnson (1997) provides both an excellent discussion of how Ovid presents Livia in the exile poetry and a useful overview of the panegyric as opposed to ironic views of the exile poetry as a whole.



Notes to Pages 57–61

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63. On Briseis’ letter in greater detail, see chapter 3 of this study. 64. Hinds (1999), 127. 65. On Ovid’s use of Homer as a foil, see Boyd (2017). 66. On the epic genre as offering a potential escape from elegiac suffering, see chapter 4 below on the letter from Oenone to Paris. 67. As argued by Rosenmeyer (1997). 68. Hinds (1999), 128, citing his previous (1985, reprinted at Knox 2006) discussion of Tristia 1.1 and 1.7. 69. I use “secondary” here in the manner of McCarthy (2000), 9–10. 70. Hinds (1999), 136, pairs Penelope with Homer as her lover, as Ovid’s wife would pair with him, whereas I see the heroines of 1.6 as paired with the authors who write about them. I follow Rosenmeyer’s (1997), 47, observation that Ovid here “prefers to equate himself with Homer, the vates.” Boyd (2017), 189, however, notes how Ovid sees himself as a foil both to Ulysses, through frequent references in the exile poetry, and Homer “on the metapoetic level.” 71. Here my argument parallels that of Davis (2006), 68, in his reading of Ovid’s Dido as able to “claim to be more authoritative than the Aeneid itself.” 72. For a discussion of Ovid’s exile, see Inglehart (2006), with further bibliography. 73. Kenney (1965), 41. 74. Hinds (1999), 141: “Only one woman in Rome has an absolute hold on the title princeps femina, and she it is who is the ultimate arbiter of the standing of Ovid’s wife, just as the princeps himself is (and has shown himself to be) the ultimate arbiter of Ovid’s own standing” (emphasis his). 75. Hinds (1999), 141. 76. See Thakur (2014) for a compelling reading of Livia in Ovid’s poetry as a linchpin for the imperial family, especially in terms of the transition from Augustus to Tiberius. 77. The bibliography on Ovid’s attitude to the imperial family in the exile poetry is vast. I am most influenced by Johnson (1997), 413, who sees in Ovid’s presentation of Livia here “a network of allusions” that permit Ovid to accomplish a range of goals. 78. The citation is from the text of Gaertner (2005). 79. Tissol (2014), 110. 80. Gaertner (2005), 299. 81. Helzle (2003), ad loc. Rosenmeyer (1997), 47, on the fluidity of Ovid’s feminization and subsequent choice to re-masculinize himself also seems relevant here. 82. Gardner (2013). I turn more fully to Gardner’s views on time in elegy as relates to the Heroides in chapter 4. 83. See Hinds (1985, reprinted at Knox 2006) on this kind of rewriting as the only way for Ovid to “book his return trip” to Rome. 84. What Hinds (1987, reprinted at Knox 2006), 50, calls the “hermeneutic alibi.”

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Notes to Pages 62–64 Chapter 3. Real Poetry

1. Jacobson (1971) and (1974); Kelly (1999). 2. Verducci (1985). 3. Barchiesi (1992b); Spoth (1992); Bolton (1997); Drinkwater (2003). 4. Fulkerson (2005), 87–106, argues that in Heroides 3 Briseis rereads Homer in a way that—unsuccessfully—attempts to give herself a central role in the success of the Greek war effort. 5. In my approach I draw heavily on the work of my predecessors, especially Janan (2001) and Miller (2004b)—on whom see below—and Lindheim (2003), 51, who focuses on the “ambiguity and doubleness” of Briseis in Ovid’s presentation of her. 6. Jacobson (1971), 339, notes the “incompatible juxtaposition of the tragic crisis and the elegiac viewpoint” in the letters but focuses on “the way the erotic element obtrudes upon the tragic, not vice-versa.” In investigating what Ovid retains and emphasizes of the heroines’ tragic experiences I thus propose to follow the urgings of Buchan (2005), 202, to use “psychoanalytic critical practice” to “foster an attention to reading ‘literally,’ by focusing on what the text says rather than reducing it to what we think it should mean.” 7. Miller (2004b), 30. 8. For assistance in articulating this point, I am grateful to Laurel Fulkerson. 9. Fear (2000), 236, articulates this exchange, following Tacitus and Cicero, thus: “The internal stability provided by the Pax Augusta was at the price both of the ability of the senatorial elite to participate as effectively as it was used to in politics and also of the republican constitution itself.” See Osgood (2006), 3, for what he labels the “colossal psychological legacy” of the war. 10. Verducci (1985), 104. 11. Janan (2001). 12. Miller (2004b). 13. Liveley (2006), 107 (emphasis hers). Miller’s use of Lacanian theory, despite what both Lively (2006), 105, and Buchan (2005), 200–201, see as an oversimplification of Imaginary and Symbolic into “public” and “private,” provides significant insights into elegy’s genesis and rapid disintegration. In recognition that many readers balk at extensive discussion of literary theory, I here provide only the bare outlines necessary to follow my argument. Readers who seek a more thorough grounding in Lacanian theory are directed especially to Janan (2001) and Miller (2004b). 14. Articulated also by Rosenmeyer (1997), 47, “Ovid identifies with his heroines, uses their gendered, foreign voices to enunciate views and feelings he would be at a loss to express in his own, male, Roman voice.” 15. In my interpretation of this concept I follow Janan (2001), 12, freely adapting her application of Lacanian theory.



Notes to Pages 64–66

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16. Miller (2004b), 5–16, provides an outstanding summation of these concepts and, 16–30, their relevance to Roman elegy. To the extent possible, my approach in this chapter follows Miller’s with its important incorporation of “Jameson’s concept of the ‘semantic conditions of possibility’” (2004b, 14). See also the study of Lindheim (2003), who uses Lacanian theory to read the Heroides in terms of their self-presentation in ways they hope will appeal to their internal addressee. 17. As suggested by Lively (2006), 106–7. 18. An excellent example of this conflict between the Imaginary and the Symbolic is that of Miller’s (2004b), 95–129, discussion of the Tibullan speaker’s Symbolic identification as a Roman eques as conflicting with his Imaginary, poetic, self-identification as a rustic farmer. 19. The starting point for this view is Hallet (1973). 20. As Miller (2004b), 5, rightly notes, “the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real do not denote mutually exclusive realms but interpenetrating registers of existence.” 21. Janan (2001), 36. 22. A similar phenomenon is noted by Janan (2001), 43, in Propertius’ Gallus poems, which express “a decidedly disenchanted perspective by emphasizing quilting’s failures—the way that it cheats or distorts the desire for wholeness and unity— and allying these failures to Woman in the form of Cynthia” (emphasis hers). Here the failures of quilting are not merely allied to Woman but embodied in the (maleauthored) female voice of Briseis. 23. See especially Miller (2004b), 16–30, and especially 28–29 for a parallel between Briseis’ situation and that of her author in Heroides 3: “In first-century B.C.E. Rome, certain changes in the Real . . . had produced a situation in which the Symbolic’s capacities for interpreting the subject no longer meshed with that subject’s own Imaginary self-identifications.” 24. Jacobson (1971), 346, claims that Briseis’ protest here “does not seem to suit the tone of the letter”; instead, her sense of betrayal is itself an important part of the letter’s engagement with contemporary cultural change. 25. Miller (2004b), 6. 26. Janan explores this connection in her discussion of Propertius 4.3, the Heroides-esque letter from Arethusa to Lycotas, which she sees (2001), 68, as plumbing “the specific tensions that traverse the notion of Romanitas in the late Republic and early Empire.” The priority of this poem to the Heroides is, while generally accepted, still contested. See the discussion of Knox (1995), 17–18. 27. As Jacobson (1971), 342, correctly puts it: “Ovid manipulates the Homeric material, adding, eliminating, and modifying as he sees fit.” 28. I owe the formulation of this point to Micalea Janan. See Fredrick (1997), 173, and passim on elegy and “the transformation of elite masculinity into text” through the (physical, written) subjection of women, and Gardner (2013) on how the women of elegy, when exposed to masculine linear time of forward historical progress as

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Notes to Pages 66–69

opposed to the feminine cyclical time in which elegy entraps them, begin a process of decay and degradation from which there is no recuperation. 29. The fundamental studies of the trope are Copley (1947), Lyne (1979), and now Fulkerson (2013). Bolton (1997), 219, provides a concise review of previous scholars’ views on Briseis’ servitium amoris in Heroides 3. 30. Critical assessments of this rewriting of epic captivity into elegiac servitium amoris run from disapproval of Ovid for parodying the plight of Homer’s captive (Verducci 1985), to appreciation of its kaleidoscope of generic and gender inversions (Bolton 1997), to psychological analysis that figures Briseis as a victim of Stockholm Syndrome (Kelly 1999). 31. Fear’s sources here (2000), 236, are Cicero and Tacitus, with particular attention to the latter’s assessment in Annals 1.2 on nobles’ collusion in their own ser­ vitude: “As Tacitus sees it, Augustus seduced an enervated Roman elite with the security of otium, but this was an otium that was tantamount to servitium.” 32. Fear (2000), 237. 33. On Briseis in Propertius 2.8, see Jacobson (1974), 18; Spoth (1992), 63–67; Dué (2002), 9–103; and Fedeli (2004), 157–62. See also Jacobson’s (1971), 336–37, brief discussion of Briseis’ treatment elsewhere in Roman poetry, where she is consistently an “exemplum for (1) the power of love and (2) the love of a man for a social inferior.” 34. This is the stance that Heroides 3 assumes, supported by Iliad 19.59–60: τὴν ὄφελ᾽ ἐν νήεσσι κατακτάμεν Ἄρτεμις ἰῷ / ἤματι τῷ ὅτ᾽ ἐγὼν ἑλόμην Λυρνησσὸν ὀλέσσας: “I wish Artemis had killed her with an arrow among the ships on that day when I took her, having destroyed Lyrnessus.” All citations of the Iliad are from the text of Allen. 35. Jacobson (1971), 25, notes “the concessions Briseis constantly makes” and Verducci (1985), 111, also notes that as the letter continues, “each of her attempts becomes progressively less ambitious as she sacrifices more and more to her desire to be effective and yet unobtrusive.” 36. These, then, are Janan’s (2001), 36, “culturally freighted signifiers.” 37. Buchan (2005), 201. 38. This is not to suggest an actual sense of opposition to Augustus: as Miller (2004b), 20–24, notes, “The myth of a return to the golden age of senatorial rule . . . offered only an illusory nostalgia.” 39. Like Dido, Briseis, too, fits Gardner’s (2013) criteria for women in elegy: Achilles is free to move on to the rest of the narrative of the Iliad, while Ovid’s Briseis has no future to move on to without him. 40. See Bolton (1997), passim, for a detailed account of this generic inversion. 41. On this point, see Feeney (1992, reprinted at Knox 2006), and more generally, on the control of discourse in the Augustan period, Barchiesi (1997).



Notes to Pages 70–74

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42. Fulkerson (2005), 92, reads Briseis’ list rather as confidently representing her “symbolic worth” to Achilles and does not comment on the changes she makes to Homer’s version. It should be noted, however, that Fulkerson’s reading focuses on how Heroides 3 serves as a model text for Hermione’s Heroides 8. Thus, Fulkerson presents not her own reading of Briseis’ letter but Hermione’s possible interpretation of it. 43. Seven; Iliad 9.128–30. 44. Boyd (2017), 101, is more apt to see Briseis as considering herself Achilles’ coniunx, or at least a sufficient substitute. 45. Bolton (1997), 222, makes a similar point, identifying epic as “the realm in which the female is often seen as a useful commodity.” 46. Jacobson (1971), 345–46, and (1974), 29. 47. What Verducci (1985), 110, here sees as an inferior reworking of Homer, I read quite differently: Ovid’s interpretation of Briseis as simply one among many such victims is precisely the point. Dué (2002), 16, comes closer to this view in her reading of women’s laments in general in the Iliad, including Briseis specifically: “Their words are both universal and personal, timeless and occasional.” Yet in Heroides 3 the words are not simply timeless but may also refer pointedly to the historical context of Ovid’s composition. 48. While it is possible that Ovid is making fun of Briseis as Verducci (1985), 103, suggests, it is worth considering that he instead offers Briseis an opportunity to present her “true” feelings stripped from the justifying context of Patroclus’ death. 49. Jacobson (1974), 14, notes here this echo of Iliad 19.290. 50. See Kennedy (1993), 32, on “the gendered opposition of mollis and durus.” 51. Miller (2004b), passim, but, especially, chapter 1. 52. On the opposition of elegy and martial poetry, see Drinkwater (2013a) with further bibliography. 53. Fear (2000). 54. So Barchiesi (1992a), ad loc., who notes the “ricercata brutalità, estranea in questo caso al modello omerico.” Here I disagree with Lindheim (1995), 68, who sees the Ovidian Briseis’ description of her family and home’s destruction as depicted “with less emotion” than in Homer. 55. Barchiesi (1992a), ad loc. Delignon (2006), 161, sees a contrast in Briseis’ report of her brothers’ deaths and that of her husband. Theirs, she asserts, is presented “pour éviter le pathétique,” whereas the explicit gruesomeness of her husband’s “chasse le pathétique.” She further notes suggestively that this passage makes readers think of “la crudité de certaines descriptions de combats dans L’Iliade.” Another mode of analysis, offered by Gardner (2013), would suggest that the repetition here expresses Briseis’ entrapment in feminine time as a circular experience in which she relives her family’s death over and over again.

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Notes to Pages 74–77

56. Verducci (1985), 110; Barchiesi (1992a), ad loc. 57. On the violence of such seemingly harmless euphemisms in elegy, however, see Drinkwater (2013a), 198–99. 58. Tolkhein (1888), 51, notes the parallel between Briseis and Andromache at Il. 6.429–30, as do Palmer (1898) and Barchiesi (1992a), ad loc., who believes the allusion “dimostra la perversione del mondo di Briseide rispetto al naturale e nobile pathos di Andromaca.” Jacobson (1974), 30, notes the irony in Ovid’s usage in that Andromache turns to Hector for comfort, while Briseis has only Achilles. Verducci (1985), 110–11, sees a “tarnished shabbiness and mimic triviality” in this allusive comparison that verges on the “grotesque.” See also Lindheim (2003), 60, on how this “allusion serves to underscore . . . Briseis’ lack of conjugal status,” and 61 on the male-centric focus of Briseis’ list of family members. 59. This concept is well established by the early empire. So Fear (2000), 235, with further citations: “Writers in the imperial period express this ambivalence in appropriately oxymoronic terms: Tacitus refers to the Augustan peace as a pax cruenta, and Seneca the younger remarked that Augustus’ clementia was in reality a form of ‘exhausted cruelty.’” On the evolution of Octavian’s severity into Augustus’ clemency, see Dowling (2006). 60. Verducci (1985), 110. Here Ovid’s presentation of Briseis’ resentment parallels that of Penelope that it would have been more useful (utilius, Her. 1.67) for her for Troy still to be standing. 61. Lindheim (2003), 58. Barchiesi (1992a), ad loc., and Jolivet (1999a), 34, note that Briseis’ prediction of who will become Achilles’ wife precisely reflects the Homeric description at Il. 9.395–99. 62. Lindheim (2003), 60, reads this episode quite differently, seeing Achilles’ comment (haec quoque nostra fuit) as an intervention in Briseis’ defense at the hands of an aggressive wife. 63. On this point, see, especially, Miller (2004b), 16–22. 64. Read against the exile poetry, this may be especially telling; by then the most important thing to Ovid is inclusion in Rome’s embrace, however changed or compromised his participation may be. See Tissol (2014) and the influential studies of Hinds (1985, 1987, 1999) and Rosenmeyer (1997). 65. Jolivet (1999a), 31–38, addresses the vexed question of how Briseis knows what she does, although he rightly refrains from positing a definitive conclusion. 66. Jacobson (1974), 32. 67. Verducci (1985), 115, sees Briseis’ use of this example as “so fraught with futility as to be counterrhetorical” mainly because Briseis “is not a proper wife at all.” See more recently, however, Boyd (2017), 102. 68. Jacobson (1974), 39, Verducci (1985), 114, Viarre (1987), 8, and Barchiesi (1992a), ad loc., all remark on how Briseis both realizes and calls attention to this difference in status.



Notes to Pages 78–83

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69. What Jacobson (1971), 41, notes as Briseis’ awareness of the difference in efficacy between words and deeds, Lindheim (1995), 55–74, sees as a part of Briseis’ consistent undermining of her own persuasive powers. 70. See Bolton (1997), 228–29, on Briseis’ renunciation of the title domina. 71. Verducci (1985), 117. 72. Verducci (1985), 117. 73. Here I draw heavily on the discussion of Osgood (2006), 357–64. 74. Osgood (2006), 359. 75. Osgood (2006), 358. 76. Osgood (2006), 359. 77. The poet himself would have been eleven in 32 BCE, too young to swear but not far from the brink of manhood by Roman standards. 78. In 5 and 3 BCE; Osgood (2006), 360–62. 79. Osgood (2006), 362, on the oath of 32 BCE: “Whatever talk there may have been of a coniuratio, this was an oath that in reality had nothing to do with the res publica or the old constitution.” Eder (1993), 101, notes in particular that this was an oath “in which private obligations and public interest were inextricably intertwined.” 80. Fear (2000), 236. 81. Fear (2000), 238. 82. Fredrick (1997), 174. 83. Barchiesi (1987), passim. 84. I borrow the term “paraquel” in relation to the Heroides from Liveley (2008). Chapter 4. Interlude 1. Some of the ideas expressed in this chapter first appeared in Drinkwater (2015). 2. For a thorough reading of the “triangulation” of letters 5, 16, and 17 and the differing perspectives of their purported authors, see Bessone (2003). 3. On the dating of the Heroides, see the introduction to this volume, p. 5, n. 10. 4. I borrow the term from Casali (1992), 88. 5. This theme is prevalent in Ovid’s oeuvre, not least in the Heroides and Meta­ morphoses. On the former, see Fulkerson (2005), and on the latter, especially, Johnson (2010). 6. I follow Rosenmeyer in focusing on the Tristia and not the Epistulae Ex Ponto because the specificity of their real-world addressees narrows their general applicability to parallels with the mythical world inhabited by Ovid’s heroines. 7. Liveley (2008), 86, with further elaboration at 96–98. 8. Bolton (2009), 275. 9. Gardner (2013). Two elements of Gardner’s approach are particularly helpful for reading Heroides 5, namely, the Kristevan feminine chora and the differing

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temporal mobility for female and male characters. For a study of the Kristevan chora applied specifically to the Heroides, see Spentzou (2003). 10. On the “unmanning” of the elegiac poet more generally and its implications for Augustan ideology, see Fear (2000) and Miller (2004b), especially 130–59. 11. Liveley (2008), 101. Her overall point is that the Heroides encourage us to read the letters as engaging in what Gary Saul Morson (1994), 6, calls “sideshadowing,” or casting shadows on the parallel narratives in Ovid’s source texts to read these sources themselves in a new and questioning light. This shadow—a literal darkening of vision—also parallels Oenone’s lack of foresight in Ovid’s presentation, on which, see Drinkwater (2015), 401 and n. 61., with further bibliography. 12. On Ovid’s own inability to “heal himself ” in exile, see Fish (2004). 13. This argument is fully articulated in Drinkwater (2015). 14. Lovatt (2013), 261. On this phenomenon in other genres as well, see Fuhrer (2015). 15. Rosenmeyer (1997), 29. 16. Ovid asserts that he is relegatus rather than exul at multiple points in the exile poetry. See, for example, McGowan (2009), 132. 17. Suggested by Lindheim (2000). 18. On the generic interplay of these inscriptions, see Drinkwater (2015), 388–91. Here I restate the arguments most germane to the present discussion. 19. See Gardner (2013), 145–80, for women and time in elegy and 219–50 for men. 20. Bradley (1969), 161, for example, notes that the inscription “may also be the epitaph of [their] love.” 21. Gardner (2013), 245, makes a similar point on the use of titulus at Propertius 4.11.32, 38. 22. Fabre-Serris (1999), 46. 23. Fabre-Serris (2012), 20, notes that Oenone’s adynaton plays on her own lack of foresight: “à l’inverse d’une Œnone sans dons prophétiques, et donc incapable de prévoir, comme celle de Parthénius, la fin de l’amour de Pâris, au moment même où son amant l’assure de son éternelle fidélité.” 24. See Bolton (2009) on the importance of water in the Heroides. Ovid’s frequent references in the exile poetry to the inhospitable Hister are a suggestive parallel. 25. Ovid uses the feminine for similar emphasis in describing his own exile at Tr. 2.109. 26. See above, chapter 1. 27. On the significance of Oenone’s consultants, see Drinkwater (2015), 395–96. 28. On the additional textual significance of this passage in corroborating Paris’ own telling of the Judgment at letter 16 lines 52 and following, see, especially, Mazurek (2006), 54ff. 29. The chronology is admittedly hard to follow. My reconstruction of events is (1) Paris tells Oenone the story of his recognition, (2) Paris tells Helen (the current



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version of) the story of his recognition, (3) Oenone sees Paris and Helen return and writes letter 5. 30. For a reading of how Heroides 5, 16, and 17 interact with each other, especially in terms of Ovidian irony, see Bessone (2003). 31. See Bolton (2009), 273–75, on seas as especially important indicators of trouble in the Heroides. 32. Fabre-Serris (2012), 3. 33. See Natoli (2017), 127, for how in Tr. 1.1 and 3.1 in particular Ovid “describes how he, as a poet, can return to Rome in the form of his libellus and how its metrical foot can go where the exile’s human foot cannot.” On the same theme in other exile poems, see, briefly, McGowan (2009), 136–39. 34. Of particular note are 1.7 passim and 2 at 61–66 and 555–61. 35. On Ovid’s refiguring the mutatas formas of the Metamorphoses as the vultus fortunae meae in the exile poetry, see Natoli (2017), 12. 36. McGowan (2009), 8. 37. Gardner (2013), 168. 38. Bolton (2009), 282. For further parallels of immobile heroines and their mobile male counterparts in the single Heroides, and the importance of exile as punishment in the Heroides, see Bolton (2009), 281. 39. Bolton (2009), 285, in reference to Medea, and 289, in reference to Phyllis. 40. Bolton (2009), 282: “The land seems to forbid the mixing of the two realms and even the transgression of this female beyond the immovability of the land.” Bolton (2009), 280, makes a similar point regarding Her. 4.105, where Phaedra describes the seas that pound against the Isthmus as fighting (opugnabant, 105) the fragile (tenuis, 106) land. 41. One could argue that Helen is the exception to this rule, although she, too, brings destruction in her wake. 42. That the poet’s imagined return is expressed in letters makes them an especially apt comparison for the Heroides, a point made by McGowan (2009), 3. See also McGowan (2009), 137, for the letter’s ability to make the poet “present” in Rome and n. 36 for further bibliography on the importance of epistolary conventions in the exile poetry. 43. The discussion of Miller (2009), 211–20, is especially illuminating. 44. On the literary tradition for Oenone, see Fulkerson (2005), 56. 45. So Knox (1995), ad loc. 46. I borrow the phrase from McGowan (2009), 151. 47. McGowan (2009), 152, and more specifically articulated at 160: Ovid “is not merely using his power as vates to recreate in his mind what has already happened, but rather to see into the future.” 48. McGowan (2009), 152, with specific reference to his attempts at “winning a return from Tomis” (2009), 161.

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49. The close proximity of these two episodes—Cassandra’s prophecy and Oenone’s rape by Apollo—is particularly confounding given the origin of Cas­ sandra’s own prophetic powers, namely, her own rape by the same god. The brief remarks of Jolivet (2001), 30–33, associating these two events focuses more on the gifts of the god to his conquests as typical of elegy, downplaying the actual violation that seems clearly to be Oenone’s own focus here. 50. See Knox (1995), 166. Fulkerson (2005), 62, sums up the issue well, calling her rape “a peculiar event to boast of.” 51. The legitimacy of lines 140–45 has, in fact, been questioned. As Palmer (1898), ad loc., reports, versus turpes totam sententiam evertentes in dubium iure vocavit Merkel. 52. For the pointed encouragement to address such incongruous moments in the text as forcing the reader to pause to ask what such unexpected and grating moments might really signify, I thank an anonymous reader for the press. 53. Although metrically fide must be the third declension fides, meaning “chord” or “lyre,” the context of this episode—Apollo’s sexual assault on Oenone—makes an echo the alternate fifth declension fides, meaning “faith” or “trust,” hard to resist from the pen of such a famous punster as Ovid. The classic study of Ovid’s word play is that of Ahl (1985). 54. Not least in Suetonius’ report (Aug. 70) of the secret dinner party in which Augustus dressed as Apollo. For the associations of Augustus and Apollo, see, especially, Miller (2009). For an excellent brief summation of the significance of Apollo in Augustus’ Rome, see Armstrong (2004), 528–30. 55. Miller (2009), 345. 56. Knox (1995), 167, notes “the legal flavor” of ingenuum . . . corpus. 57. Knox (1995), 167. 58. Miller (2004/5), 175, with further bibliography. Miller (2004/5), 175–80, goes on to unpack the close Augustan associations of Apollo in this episode and in Tr. 3.1, revisiting these ideas in Miller (2009), 343ff. 59. As Rudd (1976), 29 (cited by Miller [2009], 325), observes when Apollo appears as a sponsor of the praeceptor’s project in the Ars. An additional implication, should we choose to see it, may be an oblique criticism of the princeps in line with Suetonius’ reports that Augustus himself was a seducer of young freeborn women (69) and chose to appear at a banquet dressed as Apollo (70); I am grateful to Laurel Fulkerson for suggesting this further point. 60. Knox (1995), 166, notes that although all extant sources agree that Oenone had healing powers, no other source mentions Apollo as their source or his rape of Oenone. For a discussion of Oenone’s gifts from Apollo, see Fabre-Serris (2012), 18. 61. As Fulkerson (2005), 56, reminds us. 62. Miller (2009), 28, reminds us that the shrine of Apollo Medicus was established by Octavian’s ancestor in 433 BCE. On Augustus as healer of the state through his association with Apollo, see Wickkiser (2005).



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63. I am grateful to Jessica Westerhold for her suggestion of this point. 64. Here I follow the lead of Miller (2009), 349, who rightly notes that “political significance may be fleeting, so to press it too far will flatten a text or run the risk of downright misreading.” 65. Knox (1995), ad loc. Chapter 5. Critical Reading in Heroides 16 and 17 1. The authenticity of the double letters continues to be debated. Heyworth (2015) is an excellent contribution in defense of the position I take, namely that the letters are in fact Ovidian. 2. Anderson (1973), 70, has claimed that Paris’ letter “sounds like that of one who has mastered the lessons of Ovid’s Ars Amatoria.” For Belfiore (1980–81), 139, Paris “follows the advice Ovid gives lovers in the Ars Amatoria 1 and 2.” Cuchiarelli (1995), 135, notes that “l’epistola di Paride è construita secondo un’attenta ars dicendi.” Kenney (1996), 5, calls Heroides 16 and 17 “a demonstration of the Ars Amatoria in action in Mycenaean Greece.” Spentzou (2003), 129, sees Paris’ letter as evidence that he has “in fact complied obediently with Ovid’s own explicit advice.” Michalopoulos (2006), 42, observes that “Paris develops his argumentation like a first-class student of rhetoric and of the Ovidian erotodidaxis of the Ars Amatoria.” Contra Drinkwater (2013b). 3. An excellent example of a study that examines how the Augustan context seeps into Ovid’s poetry while refraining from too reductive a reading of politics in the Metamorphoses in particular is Feldherr (2010). 4. I borrow the term “resisting reader” from Fetterley (1978), used by Desmond (1993), 59 n. 13, in her discussion of Heroides 7. Spentzou (2003), 35–37, moves beyond Desmond’s observations, seeing the Heroides as actively undertaking a transgressive approach to their own stories. For Spentzou (2003), 37, Helen engages in “courageous transgression” in breaking through the existing (culturally) masculine discourse but only in the literary sphere. 5. On the chronology of the single and double letters, see the introduction to this volume, p. 5, n. 10. 6. This despite Paris’ own assertion that no one will pursue them at Her. 16.341–50. 7. I make several of the points that appear here in Drinkwater (2013b), reprinted here with substantial revision and permission of the publisher. 8. I borrow both the wording and the concept of reading more from Casali (1997). 9. See Kennedy (2000), on which more below. 10. Reading Paris as a stand-in for a real person is not a unique approach. Heyworth (2015), 175, for example, sees Paris as an Ovid-in-exile figure, who “has been sent on a journey by a divino monitu (17); he too is afflicted by a non leve numen,” continuing the parallel into others of the double letters.

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11. Modern scholarship treats Octavian’s transfer to the patrician order as a fact hardly worth mentioning. An exception is the brief introduction to the end of the republic of Shotter (2005), 90. 12. Michalopoulos (2006), ad loc. Kenney (1996) does not comment on plebe. 13. On this point, see Lange (2009), 13–14 and n. 3, and Levick (2009), 209–10. On the refusal of many senators, including Cicero, to acknowledge the adoption’s legitimacy, see Goldsworthy (2014), 87–90. 14. See above p. 97, n. 2. 15. A larger question is whether these precepts are effective in any case. See Watson (2007) on Ovid’s praeceptor as a “bogus teacher,” and James (2008), 138, especially n. 12, along with her observations at 141–42 on the necessary obtuseness of the male narratee who would attempt to put the precepts into use. 16. Blodgett (1973), 322, asserts that the Ars is about “how a great artist, with the technique of generations at his command, displays both his art and his awareness of himself as an artist,” an awareness that seems to be almost completely lacking in the Paris of Heroides 16. 17. I thank Jessica Westerhold for reminding me that the princeps as an imperceptive reader is a consistent theme throughout the exile poetry and in Tristia 2 in particular. 18. Here I agree with Kenney (1996), 5, on his assessment of Helen’s use of Ars 3, while I disagree that Paris uses the precepts with similar finesse. Belfiore (1980–81), 139, is closer to the mark in observing that Helen “outwits Paris at every step.” Kenney (1996), 198, however, also hints at the greater complexity of Ovid’s characterization of Helen in line with her presentation in Homer, on which, see Blondell (2010). Wood (2014) provides a salutary contrast to readings that fail to credit Helen’s skill as praeceptrix amoris, examining the roots of this role in Euripides’ Helen. 19. Ovid thus also creates a Paris and Helen who are true to their character as presented in Homer. As Fulkerson (2011), 115–19, has shown, the Iliad’s Paris remains oblivious to his responsibility whereas Helen carefully deflects blame for the war while nonetheless demonstrating a remorse that makes her more sympathetic to those around her. 20. In this, Helen importantly follows the advice of Ars am. 3.469–82 and also fits the mold articulated by James (2010). 21. Kennedy (2000), 167. 22. All citations of the Ars Amatoria are from the edition of Kenney (1961). 23. Kenney (1996), 198, may suggest that the wording here is in fact especially appropriate: if Paris’ “rhetoric is that of a victim of Ate,” surely his use of whatever skill he can is to be expected. 24. See Kennedy (2006). 25. For an excellent reading of the single Heroides’ purported authors as learning (or not) from each other’s letters and experiences, see Fulkerson (2005).



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26. I borrow the term from Hinds (1987), 26, reprinted at Knox (2006), 45. 27. As the Ars suggests at 1.55. 28. Spentzou (2003), 129, sees Paris as an excessively confident lover who considers “the device of a letter predominantly a nuisance.” We may perhaps also see here an echo of Octavian’s return to Rome as soon as he learned that he had been named Caesar’s heir in his will. 29. Watson (1983), 124, underlines what she sees as the inappropriateness of Ovid’s presentation of Paris as an elegiac lover, claiming that he actually “went to Greece, not in a vague quest for a girl friend, but in response to a specific promise from Aphrodite.” 30. As Watson (1983), 120, notes, Paris is used in the Ars as a negative example at 1.53–54: Ovid’s readers will not have to do as Paris did to find a girl. She sees such examples as instances where “the poet imagines a possible argument against his precepts, in the form of mythological exempla which counteract them, and forestalls such objections by attributing the behavior of the mythical characters in question to the difference in circumstances between mythical times and modern-day Rome.” 31. A more cautious approach was urged by those closest to Octavian, his step­ father and mother, as noted by Syme (1939), 114, and Goldsworthy (2014), 88. 32. Kenney (1996), 114, and Michalopoulos (2006), 226. 33. See especially Her. 16.287 for Paris’ assessment of Helen as rustica, a term she will appropriate and redefine at Her. 17.11–14. 34. Indeed, scholars have long treated the poem as too long to be credible, questioning swaths of text in an attempt to reconcile Paris’ excessive and overblown rhetoric with what seems more utile in pursuit of Helen. Combined with the fact that her response is just over one hundred lines shorter, the manuscript trans­ mission lends support to this tendency. Kenney (1979) addresses the question of authenticity fully and in defense of Ovidian authorship, but see also Barchiesi (1995), 326–27. For an argument in favor of the authenticity of the whole letter, see Mazurek (2006), especially 49. 35. A disturbing parallel may be available in Aeneid 6’s parade of Rome’s future before Aeneas’ eyes. There the future of Rome’s preservation, or conquest, by Augustus is promised in a manner similar to Paris’ divinely promised conquest of Helen. 36. See especially Osgood (2006), 58–59. Views on Octavian’s approach at this critical moment of course differ, as acknowledged by Meier (1993), 56, and Southern (1998), 42, the latter following the account of Nicolaus of Damascus. 37. Kenney (1996), 121, who goes on to note that “Paris is here on thin exemplary ice.” The idea is similarly stated at Kenney (1996), 196. 38. Cicero’s famous alleged assessment of Octavian in 43 BCE, reported by Decimus Brutus in Ad Fam. 11.20, that “the youth ought to be praised, honored, and gotten rid of ” (laudandum adulescentem, ornandum, tollendum) dangerously

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undervalued Octavian’s ability to outmaneuver his elders. Ovid’s Helen makes no such mistake, separating him from other iuvenes (Her. 17.99) not in his desire for her but in his boldness to action (Non tu plus cernis sed plus temerarius audes / Nec tibi plus cordis sed minus oris adest, Her. 101–2). For an excellent discussion of Octavian’s actions after the death of Caesar as presented in Cicero’s letters, see Osgood (2006), 31ff. 39. On Ovid’s employment of Greek mythology as a mode of “escapism” from political themes, see Williams (1978), 3. 40. Helen herself will say as much in her response at 17.21–34, comparing the young Paris and young Theseus unfavorably: at least Theseus regretted his behavior (Et iuvenem facti paenituisse patet, Her. 17.32). 41. Michalopoulos (2006), 261. See also the discussion of Kennedy (2006), 62–64. 42. See Watson (1983), 126, on the irony of exempla in the Ars, and (2002), 152, on their role in the poem’s humor. For a study of the ironic use of mythological exem­ pla in the Ars, see Bessone (2005). 43. So Sabot (1981), 2617. See, again, Belfiore (1980–81) for a reading of Helen’s reply as skilled but not undecided. 44. Both letters provide elaborate descriptions of Paris’ behavior at the dinner table, for instance, that draws heavily on the Ars at (Her. 16.217–58 and 17.75–88). 45. The scholarly consensus is that Helen is indeed persuaded: Bessone (2003), 153, for example, sees Helen as resisting only “nella prima parte della sua epistola.” Other assessments are even more damning: Belfiore (1980–81), 136, sees Helen as “deliberately unchaste” and Kenney (1996), 3, believes that “it is at once evident that she has made up her mind,” apparently having evolved from his opinion (1970), 390, that the letter closed with “arch incompleteness.” See, however, Spentzou (2003), 130–31, and Fulkerson (2011), especially 125–26. 46. Kennedy (2006). For this phenomenon of intratextual reading and learning (or failing to) in the single Heroides collection, see especially Fulkerson (2005). 47. Kennedy (2006), 72. Kennedy discusses this approach specifically in terms of the Heroides: for Kennedy (2006), 57, Ovid’s instruction to women to perform the epistles composita . . . voce (Ars 3.345) to enchant a lover means that her voice should be “a composite one, partly empathizing with the past heroine’s words, but simultaneously distancing herself so as to scrutinize those very same words for their present erotodidactic significance.” This seems especially true of Helen in her response to Paris’ poorly chosen examples of Ariadne, Medea, and Phaedra. Here I follow Kennedy rather than Hintermeier (1993) in my understanding of the Ars’ instructions in relation to the Heroides. 48. On facilem here, see Gibson (2003), 291. 49. As Gibson (2003), 291, notes on women’s letters in response to their lovers, a reply “must be properly pitched between the negative and the positive,” as Helen’s letter clearly is.



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50. Spentzou (2003), 131, also comments on Helen’s adherence to the Ars’ instructions, noting that Helen “is supposed to tarry and fill her delayed letter with hopes joined with fears.” Fulkerson (2011), 125, also sees the coyness in Helen’s letter: “Helen moves carefully, creating a situation that is just ambiguous enough for Paris to be unsure what she wants.” 51. See Barchiesi (1987). 52. I again borrow the term of Casali (1997). On Ovid and “plausible deniability”— specifically as relates to the period of exile—see also Fulkerson (2012), 344, following Hinds (1987). 53. Nesholm (2012) provides a compelling reading of the elements of persuasion at play in letters 16–17. See also Worman (1997), 156–57. On the use of vis specifically, see Brescia (2014). 54. The text is that of Gowers (2012). 55. Gowers (2012), ad loc., here notes “a sinister hint at [Octavian’s] powers of control and censorship.” Contra, Griffin (1984), 189–90: “The tone of the passages is such that any idea of Augustus really forcing a poet to write is evidently absurd.” Arguments based on subjective measures like “tone” are on notoriously shaky ground. 56. So Fulkerson (2011), 118. 57. James (2008), 152. 58. On which, see, again, Fulkerson (2011). 59. On the comparative use of mythological exempla by Paris and Helen, see Michalopoulos (2006), 5–8. 60. On the exchange between Paris and Helen about the possibility of war, see Mazurek (2006), 64–66. 61. See James (2008), 153–54, 156, for the general concern the Ars would give a female reader about the possibility of a faithful amator, and for Paris as a specific cause of concern see Mazurek (2006), 55 n. 17. Ironically, though, Paris will prove himself once again a failed student of the Ars in his steadfast commitment to Helen. 62. Helen addresses the problem of Paris’ first wife directly at Her. 17.195–204. 63. Thus Helen engages in precisely what Kennedy (2006), 61, calls “a good example of student-centered learning: give the pupil a bibliography of further reading and let her follow it up.” 64. See the discussion of Kennedy (2006), 62–64. 65. So Kenney (1996), 2–3: “Helen may appear to be a free agent, able to reject Paris’ dishonourable advances if she wishes, but (as the reader knows) it is already written in the book of the Fates that the Trojan War shall take place and that she shall go down to posterity as the casus belli.” 66. As Barchiesi (1995), 327, puts it: “The Ovidian Helen is aware that many different, future Helens . . . depend on her decision.” 67. What Kennedy (2000), 160, calls the “already/not yet” teleological phenomenon present in didactic scenes is also at play in Heroides 16: Paris is “already”

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responsible for the Trojan war in his eventual departure with Menelaus’ wife but has “not yet” convinced her to go. Kennedy (2006), 73, rearticulates this phenomenon in terms of the learning process. Coda 1. Readings of Heroides 1–21 as an integrated collection remain a remarkably rare phenomenon, with Spentzou (2003) as the notable exception. On the importance of considering the Heroides as a whole, see Barchiesi (1995), 326, with further elaboration in Barchiesi (1999). On the textual problems of the double-letter collection, see Heyworth (2015). 2. For a reading of the poems in terms of Ovid’s overall career trajectory, see Thorsen (2018). 3. On the authority of Augustus in the poetic sphere, see especially Ziogas (2015). 4. Drinkwater (2007), 383. 5. An excellent summary of the story and its variants, on which I draw here, is provided by Rosenmeyer (1996), 9–12, with bibliography. Ziogas (2021) is excellent on the letter’s interaction with its Callimachean source as setting both intertextual and legal precedent for Ovid’s letters. I express my thanks to Dr. Ziogas for sharing his most recent work with me in correspondence. 6. Despite the extortionate nature of the relationship, this view persists. So Ziogas (2016), 229, and (2021), 180, although he also recognizes (2021), 147, that Acontius’ “letter resembles the assault of a sexual predator” and “all but kills Cydippe.” While Thorsen (2019), 130, notes that “Ovid’s many deviations from the Callimachean model . . . complicate the question of the story’s ending” due to the uncertainty of the epistolary genre, she, too, sees an outcome in which Acontius and Cydippe marry as “happy.” 7. This act of inscription has led scholars to focus on Acontius as a poet; see Thorsen (2019), especially 131, n. 9. 8. Rosenmeyer (1996), 13. 9. Ziogas (2016), 222, and Ziogas (2021), 146. The fundamental study of legal speech in letters 20–21 is that of Kenney (1970). His work has been advanced by Videau (2004), who sees Cydippe as plaintiff and Acontius as defendant in absentia, and Alekou (2011), who provides in-depth legal analysis. See also the excellent discussion of Ziogas (2016), revisited and expanded in Ziogas (2021). 10. In fact, Acontius is explicit about his approval of Paris’ approach: Non sum, qui soleam Paridis reprehendere factum (Her. 20.49). Kenney (1996), ad loc., also sees this as “an authorial glance back at the first pair of the double epistles.” 11. As argued by Kenney (1996). Videau (2004) notes that the legal manipulation is an addition not present in Callimachus’ source text, where the focus is instead on religious aetiology alone. Alekou (2011) and especially Ziogas (2021) examine Acontius’ legal arguments in depth.



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12. Videau (2004) makes the point that by the time Ovid composed the Heroides, the consent of the bride was required for a marriage to take place; so also Ziogas (2021), 149. Videau sees a tension here between earlier legal practice when consent was not required and marriage could be enforced, a point which Ziogas (2021), 145, also notes. 13. Pp. 79–80. Ovid underscores this connection by having Acontius mention Briseis specifically at Her. 20.69. 14. See, especially, Rosenmeyer (1996). 15. Master (2020) carefully traces how Augustus’ legal program, especially from 2 BCE on, was intentionally promulgated to support his increasingly autocratic rule. I am grateful to Dr. Master for conversations about this topic. 16. Roller (2001), 59–63, with an excellent brief discussion of the oaths and scholarship on them. 17. Roller (2001), 62. Alternate views of the oath/s administered by both Julius Caesar and Octavian/Augustus of course exist as well. A notable example is Kearsley (2013), 834, who believes that “Augustus’ goal was to replace the Roman people’s painful memories of civil discord with peace and prosperity after he won in 31 BC.” My argument here is that, for some at least, this effort was unsuccessful and that the painful memories, of Octavian’s rise as much as anything, continue to surface for decades to come. 18. On the validity of Acontius’ tactics as dependent on whether they would be seen as a dolus bonus or malus, see Videau (2004): “Dans le droit romain le plus ancien, tromper, par exemple pour obtenir un meilleur prix d’un objet, était considéré comme bonus dolus”; see also Ziogas (2021), 162. This point is discussed in greater detail by Alekou (2011), 398–403, who also addresses Acontius’ extensive fraud. 19. As Kenney (1996), 187, puts it: “Acontius . . . is distinctly unapologetic.” 20. Alekou (2011), 407, also notes that Cydippe’s free will is clearly called into question in this context. Ziogas (2021), 195, reads Cydippe literally as “willingly surrendering herself to Acontius’ wishes” at 240 (libens, as she says), a point to which I shall return below. 21. Here Alekou (2011), 410, sees Acontius as asserting his rights of ownership and indeed as positioning himself as her dominus. Her detailed discussion of this theme (2011), 409–13, is more convincing than Ziogas’ (2021), 149–50, insistence on Cydippe as a domina of elegy with the power that status entails. On this point, see Alekou (2011), 472, and on Cydippe as “chattel” here, see also Thorsen (2019), 132. 22. As Augustus himself puts it at RG 25.2. On the precise occasion and timing of the oath, see Kearsley (2013). 23. On the wording of the oath see Osgood (2006), 361. The prayers for the health of Augustus continued at regular intervals, as he himself notes at RG 9.1. 24. Cydippe disparages Acontius’ accomplishment in having vanquished a defenseless girl (quid gaudes, aut quae tibi gloria parta est, / quidve vir elusa virgine

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laudis habes, Her. 21.115–16); she clearly does not buy his assertion at the end of his letter that his family is one of morals without stain, sine crimine mores (Her. 20, 225). 25. Alekou (2011), 449. 26. Kenney (1996), 239. 27. For Alekou (2011) and Ziogas (2021), the answer is Ovid’s exploitation of legal language. While they are correct that legal language saturates both Heroides 20 and 21, the dense concentration here in the last pair, and nowhere else in the Heroides collection, is a suspicious outlier. 28. See Alekou (2011), 453. 29. See Ziogas (2021), 187–89. 30. Quae iurat, mens est: sed nil iuravimus illa; / illa fidem dictis addere sola potest (Her. 21.135–36). 31. Pointed out also by Heyworth (2015), 145. Alekou (2011), 454, points out that by the late republic, a declaration is not valid without the conscious intent of the speaker; this is the legal context for Ovid’s creation. 32. As Kenney (1996), ad loc., notes, this section of Cydippe’s letter (145–248) is preserved only in the Parma edition. For the debate on these letters’ authenticity, see again Heyworth (2015). 33. References to the Res Gestae are to the text of Cooley (2009). 34. Cooley (2009), 176, points out that in his account of the colonies, Augustus focuses chiefly on those whose land he paid for himself and “does not mention colonies established on lands seized from conquered peoples” or those who supported Antony, some of whom would surely have counted as among the wealthy. 35. Kenney (1996), 233. 36. It will be clear that my interpretation here differs from that of Ziogas (2021), 195. 37. So Alekou (2011), 457, and Ziogas (2021), 193–94. 38. See also the ingenious suggestion of Thorsen (2019), 140–42, that Cydippe as a poet may be Cydippe as the poet, Ovid himself, as the two are the only char­ acters in his entire corpus referred to as parum prudens, and that this association only appears here (Her. 21.121–22) and the Tristia (2.544–45) and Epistulae ex Ponto (2.10.15–16). 39. Heyworth (2015), 148. 40. Giusti (2016), 33.

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Index Locorum

Augustus, Res Gestae 1.1, 121 9.1, 155n23 25.2, 155n22 27, 121 31–33, 121 Catullus 66, 134n87 Cicero Ad Familiares 11.20, 151n38 Homer, Iliad 6.429–30, 144n58 9.128, 71 9.128–30, 143n43 9.128–47, 70 9.130, 71 9.132–34, 78 9.186–89, 80 9.270, 71 9.291–97, 72 9.292, 74 9.395–99, 144n61 9.529, 77 9.601–5, 77 19.59–60, 142n34 19.290–300, 71–72 19.292, 74 19.302, 68, 72

Horace Sermones 1.3.4, 110 Ovid, Ars amatoria 1.51–56, 103 1.53–54, 151n30 1.55, 151n27 1.440, 104 1.455–56, 103 1.459, 99 1.463–66, 104–5 1.612, 101 1.673, 110 1.683–88, 105 1.688, 111 2.253, 104 3.31–43, 112 3.33–36, 107 3.345, 152n47 3.469–82, 150n20 3.475, 109 3.476, 109 3.477, 109 Ovid, Epistulae ex Ponto 1.4.47–56, 59–60 2.10.15–16, 156n38 4.9.37–42, 92 Ovid, Fasti 3.543, 131n50 167

168 Ovid, Heroides 1.1–2, 42 1.4, 42, 46 1.7–10, 42 1.9–10, 42 1.11–22, 42, 137n28 1.25, 42 1.28, 43 1.29–32, 43–44 1.37–38, 44 1.39–43, 45 1.47–50, 46, 95 1.51–56, 40, 46–47, 48 1.52, 48–49 1.53–54, 51 1.54, 49 1.55, 50, 51 1.63–64, 40 1.63–65, 44 1.67, 51, 144n60 1.68, 52 1.84, 41, 52 1.85, 52 1.88–90, 52 1.97, 59 1.97–98, 54 1.98, 59 1.100, 44 1.103–4, 54 1.107–8, 53 1.109, 57 1.115–16, 59, 60 1.116, 54 1.190, 63 3.1–6, 69 3.5, 63 3.20, 67 3.35–40, 70 3.36, 71 3.43–54, 72–74 3.46, 65, 66

Index Locorum 3.51, 75 3.52, 75 3.54, 75 3.60, 67 3.68, 67 3.69, 67, 76 3.72, 76 3.73, 76 3.75, 67 3.77, 76 3.79–80, 76 3.80, 67, 76 3.81, 76 3.93, 77 3.97, 57, 77 3.97–102, 77–78 3.100, 63, 67 3.101, 67 3.103, 79 3.107, 79 3.109–10, 78 3.111–12, 79 3.121, 80 3.122, 80 3.123–24, 80 3.127, 63 3.139, 81 3.143, 81 3.149, 67 3.154, 63 4.105–6, 147n40 5.22, 85 5.23–24, 85 5.25, 85 5.26, 85 5.29–32, 86 5.33–38, 86–87 5.39–40, 87 5.59–70, 90–92 5.70, 86, 90 5.77, 92

Index Locorum

5.78, 92 5.113, 93 5.114, 93 5.117–18, 93 5.119, 93 5.133, 94 5.139, 94 5.140–41, 94 5.143, 94 5.144, 94 5.145, 94 5.150, 95 7.7–10, 17–18 7.15–16, 17–18 7.41–52, 19–21 7.54, 20 7.64, 24 7.67, 22 7.67–68, 22 7.68, 24 7.69, 25, 31 7.69–70, 24, 25–26 7.74–80, 130n37 7.81–84, 25 7.81–85, 25–26 7.84, 28 7.85, 36 7.95–96, 30 7.97–106, 30–31 7.98, 32 7.100, 32 7.102, 32 7.103–4, 37 7.104, 32 7.105, 32 7.118, 22 7.139, 18 7.170, 130n39 7.170–71, 20 7.173, 20, 130n39 16.10, 102

16.15, 102 16.19, 105 16.19–20, 102 16.35, 102 16.36, 116 16.51–52, 99 16.53–59, 87–89 16.58, 91 16.65–70, 87–89 16.69, 86 16.215–58, 100 16.217–58, 152n4 16.247–50, 111 16.260, 103 16.261–62, 104 16.263–64, 102, 104 16.265, 111 16.265–66, 104 16.269, 104 16.287, 151n33 16.298, 102 16.325–30, 110 16.325–52, 100 16.341–44, 106 16.341–50, 149n6 16.341–70, 111 16.347, 107 16.349–50, 107 17.11–14, 151n33 17.13, 108 17.21–34, 152n40 17.36, 104 17.75–88, 152n44 17.99, 152n38 17.101–2, 152n38 17.141–42, 108 17.185–86, 110 17.191, 107 17.193, 107, 112 17.195, 104 17.199–200, 104

169

170 17.229, 107 17.229–34, 112 17.245, 111 17.245–50, 111 17.245–52, 106 17.257–58, 108 17.267–68, 108 20.1, 116 20.2, 116 20.21, 117 20.22, 117 20.23, 117 20.31–32, 117 20.35–36, 117 20.37, 117 20.41, 117 20.47–48, 117 20.49, 154n10 20.69, 155n13 20.95, 118 20.101–6, 118 20.109–10, 118 20.109–22, 118 20.123–26, 118 20.135–78, 118 20.179, 118, 119 20.180, 118 20.185, 118 20.225, 156n24 20.233, 118 21.1–2, 119 21.5–6, 119 21.37–38, 119 21.37–54, 119 21.39–40, 119, 120 21.41–42, 119 21.50–51, 120 21.51, 120 21.53–54, 120 21.115–16, 156n24

Index Locorum 21.121–22, 156n38 21.128–32, 120–21 21.134–54, 121 21.135–36, 156n30 21.143, 121 21.146, 121 21.147, 121 21.148, 121 21.151–54, 122 21.174, 122 21.181, 122 21.189–202, 119 21.213–14, 119 21.231–32, 122 21.233–34, 122 21.235, 122 21.240, 122 Ovid, Metamorphoses 1, 94 Ovid, Tristia 1.1, 92, 147n33 1.2, 91 1.3.25, 138n54 1.3.25–26, 55 1.4, 91 1.6.17, 57 1.6.17–30, 56 1.6.18, 57 1.6.25, 58 1.6.27, 58 1.6.28, 138n54 1.6.29, 57 1.6.31, 57 1.6.33, 57 1.7.19–20, 138n44 2.109, 146n25 2.544–45, 156n38 3.1, 92, 147n33, 148n58 3.2.21–22, 92 3.3.10, 95

Index Locorum

4.8.29, 93 4.8.43–44, 93 5.14.35–42, 138n58 Propertius 1.21, 50 1.21.9–10, 50 1.22, 50–51 1.22.1–10, 50–51 4.3, 141n26 4.11.32, 146n20 4.11.38, 146n20 Suetonius, Augustus 70, 148n54 Virgil, Aeneid 1.279, 38 1.299, 14 1.351–59, 28–29 1.353–54, 132n59 1.362, 29 1.365–70, 22 1.367, 22 2, 26 2.270–97, 132n59 2.272, 25 2.738–40, 26 2.767–70, 26 2.772–79, 26–28 2.777–89, 25, 35 2.788–91, 26–28 4, 23

4.212, 22 4.212–13, 22 4.215, 22 4.266, 132n60 4.309–13, 18–19 4.351–53, 132n59 4.356–61, 35 4.384–86, 25 4.394–96, 134n91 4.430, 20 4.433, 20 4.441, 21 4.442, 21 4.445, 21 4.446, 21 4.457–61, 30 4.458, 32 4.562, 20 4.569–70, 20 4.600–602, 132n55 4.654, 23–24 6, 24, 30, 37 6.456, 35 6.456–66, 34–35 6.467–76, 36–37 6.470–71, 34 6.489, 36 6.695–96, 132n59 Virgil, Eclogues 1.70–73, 48 Virgil, Georgics 1.491–97, 48–49 1.501–8, 49–50

171

Index

Apollo episode, in Heroides 5, 84–85, 92–96, 100, 116, 122, 148n49 Apollo Medicus, 95, 148n62 Apollonius, Argonautica, 107 Appian, 131n45 Ara Pacis, dedication of, 80 Ariadne, 107, 112, 152n47 Artemis, 115. See also Diana Atalanta, 104 Athena, 44. See also Minerva auctor, 13–14, 33, 133n82 auctoritas, 46 Augustan legislation, 116–17 Augustan poets, as auctores, 33 Augustan Rome, 9–10, 65–68, 75–76, 81, 95–96, 98; citizen status in, 41, 46, 64, 75–76. See also civil wars, Roman; post-civil-war Rome Augustus, 33, 38, 60–61, 95–96, 148n62, 156n34; association with Apollo, 94–95, 148n54, 148n59, 148n62; Res Gestae, 79, 121. See also Octavian authenticity, in Heroides, 123, 149n1, 151n34 authority, narrative, 6–7, 10, 15–16, 20, 23, 37, 77, 83, 86–89, 137n24. See also reliability, narrative authorship, composite, 10

“abandoned hero” stance, 84, 138n55 abandonment, 3, 6, 82–84; of Ariadne by Theseus, 107; of Creusa by Aeneas, 24–25, 28; of Dido by Aeneas, 15, 24; of Medea by Jason, 117; of Oenone by Paris, 90; of Ovid’s wife due to his exile, 60–61 accountability, 75–76 Achilles, 136n16; in Heroides 3, 62–81 Acontius and Cydippe, 115–22 active reading, 45 Aeneas, 17–39, 47–48 Aethra (maid of Helen), 103–4 Agamemnon, oath of, 78–79 Alekou, S., 119 allegorical readings, 7, 54 “already/not yet,” 153n67 “already written,” 112–14, 153n65 ambiguity, Helen and, 111–13, 152n45, 153n50 Anderson, W. S., 149n2 Andromache, 56, 75, 144n58 Antony, and Octavian, 106, 118–20 Apollo, 117–22, 148n59; association with Augustus, 94–95, 148n54, 148n59, 148n62; rape of Cassandra, 148n49; rape of Oenone, 93–96, 148n49 Apollo, festival of, 115 173

174 Barchiesi, A., 51, 74, 81, 135n1, 144n58, 153n66 bargain, Briseis’, 75–76 Belfiore, E., 149n2, 150n18 Blodgett, E. D., 150n16 Bolton, M. C., 83, 91–92, 143n45, 147n40 Boyd, B. W., 136n18 Bradley, E., 146n20 Breed, B., 137n38 Briseis, 62–81, 112, 155n13 Buchan, M., 140n6 capitonnage (Lacan), 64–68, 79 captivity, 62–81 Carthage, 21–22 Cassandra, 92–93, 148n49 catalogs of good women, 57 chronology, in Heroides, 7, 114, 146n29 Cicero, 151n38 citizen status, in Augustan Rome, 41, 46, 64, 75–76 civil wars, Roman, 3–4, 12, 40–43, 48, 50–54, 63, 68, 74–76, 80, 109–10, 137n38, 137n42 Clymene (maid of Helen), 103–4 colonization, Roman, 48–50, 121, 156n34 comparing small things with great, 55–57 composite reading, 10 coniugis sanguinolenta imago, 25–26 coniunx, 24; Briseis, 76–78, 143n44; Creusa, 25–28; Sychaeus, 28–33 coniunx erepta, 26–28 coniunx semper Ulixis, 52–54 consent to marriage, 155n12 courtship, of Acontius and Cydippe, 115–18 Creusa, 23–28, 132n65

Index crisis of masculinity, 8. See also female persona, adoption of Cuchiarelli, A., 149n2 culpa, 32 cunning, of Penelope, 44–46 Cydippe, 115–22, 156n38 dating, of Heroides, 126n10, 126n14 Davis, P. J., 128n36, 135n4, 139n71 death: of Augustus, 3; Briseis and, 81; of Caesar, 103, 106; Cydippe and, 122; of Dido, 24–25, 33–39; of Patroclus, 68; of Sychaeus, 29–30, 32 delay, in elegy, 90–92 Delignon, B., 143n55 Delphi, oracle at, 115, 122 Desmond, M., 13–14, 132n54, 133n69 Diana, 118, 122 Dido, 13–39; death of, 24–25, 33–39; and founding of Carthage, 21–23, 29, 131n46; silence of, 33, 37; as Virgilian ghost, 23–24 Diomedes, 45–46 disempowerment, 6, 8, 63–64 dispossession, 47, 81, 109 Doloneia, 45 dolus, 45 dominus and serva, 67, 69 Dué, C., 143n47 Eder, W., 145n79 elegy, 43–44, 80, 83–84, 89, 127n22, 131n44; speaker of, 8, 64–66, 74, 83, 141n18 (see also female persona, adoption of). See also epic/elegy tension embassy to Achilles (Homer), 67–68, 70–71, 77–78, 80 entrapment, 11, 57, 117; of Briseis, 63; of Cydippe, 115–16, 119; of Oenone, 83, 95; of Ovid, 57, 83



Index

epic, 65, 143n45; in Heroides 1, 40–61; in Heroides 7, 13–39 epic/elegy tension: in Heroides 3, 62–81; in Heroides 5, 82–96 Eros, 115 Euripides, Helen, 150n18 exclusus, 42 exclusus amator, 59 exempla, of Paris, 104, 107–8, 152n47 exile, Ovid’s, 42, 54–61, 82–84, 89, 91, 93, 95, 110–11, 138n55, 138n57 exile poetry, Ovid’s, 84, 89, 91, 93, 95, 101, 123, 136n11, 144n64, 146n24, 150n17 extortion, of Cydippe, 115, 117 Fabre-Serris, J., 86, 89, 146n23 failure, Heroides as, 13–14, 128n1 fama, 32 family, loss of, 43 Fear, T., 6, 66, 74, 80, 127n22, 135n6, 140n9, 144n59 Feldherr, A.,15, 37–38, 131n51, 134n90, 134n93 Felson-Rubin, N., 40, 135n1 female persona, adoption of, 8–9, 64, 100, 140n14 femina princeps, 56–59, 139n74 feminist readings, 11 fides Aeneia, 132n54 force (vis), 109–11, 120–21 foundation myth, Roman, 7, 14, 16, 21–23, 35, 38, 40, 48. See also Virgil, Aeneid fraud, in Heroides 20, 117–22 Fulkerson, L., 148n50, 153n50 Gaertner, J. F., 60 Gallus, 50 Gardner, H., 60, 83, 85, 90–92 genre, problem of, 84. See also epic/ elegy tension

175

ghost images, 23–39 Gibson, R., 152n49 Giusti, E., 9–10, 123, 128n37, 133n66 Gowers, E., 153n55 Greene, E., 8 Griffin, J., 153n55 Habermehl, P., 135n97, 135n99 haunting, 23–39 health: of Cydippe, 118; of Octavian and Rome, 118–19 Hector and Andromache, 75, 144n58 Helen, 85, 90–93, 97–113, 147n41; and Ars amatoria, 101, 108–12, 153n50; as resisting reader, 99, 101, 104 Helzle, M., 60 Hexter, R., 16, 31–32 Heyworth, S. J., 123, 149n10 hiemps, 19–20 Hinds, S., 55, 57–58, 138n57, 139n74 Hippodamia, 104, 111 Hister, the, 146n24 Holzberg, N., 42 Homer: Iliad, 7, 57–58, 62–81, 111, 137n24, 139n70, 150n19; Odyssey, 40–61, 111 Horace, 110; Roman Odes, 15 Hypsipyle, 112 Iarbas, 22 identification, Lacanian, 64–68 identity, issues of, 52, 83; Briseis and, 62–81; Roman citizens, 6, 9, 63 Imaginary, the (Lacan), 62–81, 141n20 imagines, Virgilian, 23–39 imitation/borrowing, 135n1 inhumati imago coniugis, 28–33 inscriptions: of oath on apple (Acontius and Cydippe), 115–16; by Paris for Oenone, 85–86, 146n20

176

Index

interactional model, 135n1 intertextuality, 9, 15–16; in Heroides 1, 46–52; in Heroides 3, 77–81 isolation, 11, 84, 92, 95, 109 ius domini, 63 Jacobson, H., 13–15, 41, 53, 128n2, 140n6, 141n24, 141n27, 142n33, 142n35 James, S., 111 Janan, M., 11, 64, 140n5, 141n22 Jason and Medea, 107 Judgment of Paris, 86–88, 102, 105 Juno, 86–88 Kearsley, R., 155n17 Keith, A., 133n68, 134n86 Kennedy, D. F., 11, 32, 101, 108, 138n51, 152n47, 153n63 Kenney, E. J., 58, 106, 119, 121, 149n2, 151n37, 153n65, 154n10, 155n19 Knox, P. E., 14, 33, 48–49, 53, 94, 126n10, 136n20, 136n21 Lacan, J., 64–68, 140n13 Laertes, 59 lament: of Briseis for Patroclus, 67–68, 71–74; women’s, in Iliad, 143n47 Laudamia, 56 Leander and Hero, 114–15 legal language, 100, 105, 116–19, 156n27 legal program, of Augustus, 155n15 letters, single and double, in Heroides, 5–7, 11–12, 54, 61, 82, 97–98, 113–23, 149n1 Lindheim, S. H., 140n5, 144n58 Liveley, G., 83 Livia (wife of Augustus), 56–59 loss, political/personal, 6–7, 43

Lucan, Pharsalia, 117 lyre, Apollo and, 94 maids, of Helen, 103–4, 108 marginalization, 83–84 McGowan, M., 89, 93, 126n15, 147n47 Medea, 107, 112, 152n47 Meleager and Kleopatra, 77–78 Meliboeus, 48 Mercury, 20 Michalopoulos, A., 100, 107, 149n2 Millar, F., 3 Miller, J., 94, 149n63 Miller, P. A., 8, 11, 15–16, 64, 66, 73–74, 128n1, 129n18, 140n5, 140n13, 141n16, 141n20, 141n23, 142n38 Milnor, K., 6 Minerva, 86–88 mistaken identity, 64–68 mobility: male, 83–84, 87–91; Oenone’s lack of, 90–91 mollior hora, 73–74 mollis, 73–74 Morson, G. S., 146n11 Mount Ida, 83–86, 88, 92, 95 mythographic outcome, 112–14, 153n65 Natoli, B., 147n33 Nelis, D., 137n35 Nestor, 44, 46 nostalgia, 41–46, 89 nuntius, 35, 134n90 oath: of Agamemnon (Homer), 78–79; of Briseis, 78–80; of Cydippe, 115–16, 118, 120–22; of loyalty (32 BCE), 79–80, 116, 118, 145n77, 145n79, 155n17; of Paris to Oenone, 86 Octavian, 49, 52, 66, 76, 137n42, 150n11, 151n38; associated with Paris, 98–113;



Index

and oath of loyalty, 79–80, 116, 118, 145n77, 145n79, 155n17; return to Rome, 103, 106–7, 151n28; as “Roman youth,” 99–100. See also Augustus Odysseus, 46 Oenone (nymph), 82–96, 98, 104 Osgood, J., 79, 145n79 otium, 66, 74 Ovid: as Augustan, 3–6; exile of, 42, 54– 61, 82–84, 89, 91, 93, 95, 110–11, 138n55, 138n57; poetry of exile, 84, 89, 91, 93, 95, 101, 123, 136n11, 144n64, 146n24, 150n17; political engagement, 5–6, 10, 12; as second Homer, 57–58; as seer, 147n47; skepticism of, 13–14, 28 Ovid, wife of, 55–61 Ovid, works: Ars amatoria, 11, 98–111, 149n2, 150n18; Epistulae ex Ponto, 59–60; Heroides, 154n1; Heroides 1, 38–61, 109; Heroides 3, 61–81, 109, 116, 136n16, 137n41; Heroides 5, 82–96, 109; Heroides 6, 112; Heroides 7, 13–39, 46, 109; Heroides 8, 143n42; Heroides 10, 112; Heroides 12, 107, 112; Heroides 16, 97–113, 153n67; Heroides 20, 115–22; Heroides 21, 116; Metamor­ phoses, 89, 107; Tristia, 54–61, 83, 89, 91, 138n55, 150n17 Palmer, A., 53 paraquels, 81, 83, 145n84 Paris, 116, 149n10; and art of seduction, 99–108, 153n61; carmen of, 85–86; courtship of Helen, 102–8; in Heroides 5, 82–96; in Heroides 16–17, 97–113; Judgment of, 86–88; and Romana iuventus, 99; tree inscriptions for Oenone, 85–86; voyage to Sparta, 103; wounded in war, 95 pars magna patriae, 65–66, 68, 74

177

pastoral, in Heroides 5, 82–96 Patroclus, Briseis’ lament for, 67–68, 71–74 Pax Augusta, 6, 80–81, 112–13, 140n9 Penelope, 40–61, 112 periuria, 22 perspective, 83; in Heroides 1, 40–61; in Heroides 3, 77; in Heroides 7, 13–39 Perugia, 51 Perusia, 51, 137n39 Perusine War, 3–4 Phaedra, 147n40, 152n47 Pharsalus, 49 Philippi, 49 Phoenix, 77–78 Piazzi, L., 133n67 plausible deniability, 111, 153n52 plebs, 99–100 poetic vigor, lack of, 57–58 points de capiton, 65 post-civil-war Rome, 11, 39, 41, 46–47, 59, 62, 72–74, 102 posthumous publication, Heroides as, 123 powerlessness, 11, 37, 109; Briseis and, 63–64, 67–68, 71, 78–79; citizens and, 41, 109; Ovid and, 57, 84, 95 privileging, question of, in Heroides 1, 44–46 prize, Helen as, 102, 104–5. See also Judgment of Paris Propertius, 50–51, 141n22 prophecy, 92–94 publica causa, 105–6, 111 public shaming, 6–7, 76 pudor, 32 puella, elegiac, 69–71, 79, 101 puellae, Roman, 102–3 puella relicta, 90–91 punica fides, 22–23, 132n54

178

Index

purple, as royal color, 90–92 Pygmalion, 28–29 querela, elegiac, 69 questioning process, in Heroides 7, 16–21, 32 “quilting” (Lacan), 64–68, 79 Rantala, J., 125n5 rape: of Cassandra by Apollo, 148n49; of Oenone by Apollo, 93–96, 148n49 Real, the (Lacan), 62–81, 141n20 refashioning, of source texts, 6–7 refugees, Dido and Aeneas as, 29 reliability, narrative, 15, 24, 38, 44–46, 87, 137n24 reputation, concern with, 32, 46, 85 resisting readers, 97–98, 149n4 res publica, 6, 100, 105–6, 111, 122, 136n13 return: desired, of Ovid to Rome, 60, 83, 93, 95, 147n33, 147n42, 147n48; of Helen to Menelaus, 111; of Octavian to Rome, 103, 106–7, 151n28; of Paris to Troy, 90–92; of Ulysses to Penelope, 41–46, 54, 60 return to normal, 11, 41–46, 54 reunion scene, 43, 59–61 Richardson, L., 51, 137n39 rivalry: of Acontius and Cydippe’s fiancé, 118–21; of Octavian and Antony, 118–20 river, flowing, 86, 146n24 Roller, M., 117 Romana iuventus, 99, 108–10, 151n38 romanitas, 6 Rome: Augustan, 9–10, 41, 46, 64–68, 75–76, 81, 95–96, 98; civil wars, 3–4, 12, 40–43, 48, 50–54, 63, 68, 74–76, 80, 109–10, 137n38, 137n42; foundation myth, 7, 14, 16, 21–23, 35, 38, 40,

48 (see also Virgil, Aeneid); postcivil-war, 11, 39, 41, 46–47, 59, 62, 72–74, 102; temple of Apollo, 92, 94, 148n62 Rosenmeyer, P. A., 5–6, 42, 82, 115, 136n11, 138n43, 138n55, 139n70, 140n14 Schiesaro, A., 129n8, 129n11, 130n23, 133n73 “schizoid discourse,” 63 seduction: of Cydippe by fruit, 115–18; of Helen by Paris, 99–108 seer, 92–94, 147n47 serva and dominus, 67, 69 servitium, 62–68 servitium amoris, 63, 66–67, 74, 142n30 servitude, experience of, in Augustan Rome, 66–68, 75–76 Servius, 131n45 shadow, 84, 146n11 Sharrock, A., 126n9 Shumate, N., 15 sideshadowing, 84, 146n11 skepticism, Ovid and, 13–14, 28 Skinner, M., 8 Social War, 4 space, gendered, 83, 92 speech, inhibition of, 6–7 Spentzou, E., 149n2, 151n28, 153n50 split perspective, 15–16, 77–81 Starks, J., 22–23, 131n50, 131n52 Sulla, 4, 106 superficial readers: Paris as, 98–108, 113; princeps as, 150n17 Sychaeus, 23–24, 28–33, 37 Symbolic, the (Lacan), 62–81, 141n20 Tacitus, Annals, 142n31 Telemachus, 44, 46, 53–54, 59 Theseus and Ariadne, 107



Index

179

Thorsen, T., 126n10, 126n15, 154n6 Tibullus, 8, 141n18 Timaeus, 131n45 time: circular, 143n55; elegiac, 35–37, 83, 90–92, 134n89; feminine, 85, 143n55; frozen, 35 Tissol, G., 60 titulos, 85 Toll, K., 15, 38 transplanting tactic, 57–58 tree inscriptions, by Paris for Oenone, 85–86 trickster, Acontius as, 117 Trogus/Justin, 131n45 troiana fides, 21–23 Trojan War, 7, 109–10, 153n65; in Heroides 1, 42–47, 54; in Heroides 3, 62, 65, 68, 80; in Heroides 5, 95; in Heroides 16–17, 105–6 Troy, 47–48, 88–94 Tullus, 50–51

vates, Ovid as, 93 venia, 32 Venus, 22, 28–29, 86–88 Verducci, F., 79, 142n35, 144n58, 144n67 Videau, A., 155n18 Virgil: Aeneid, 7, 13–39, 47–48, 151n35; Eclogues, 48; Georgics, 48–50 virtus, 6 viscera, 52–53, 63 vision, 92–93 voice, Briseis and, 68–74

Ulysses, 40–61, 139n70 Umbria, 51 underworld, Dido in, 33–39

Ziogas, I., 33, 133n82, 134n83, 154n6, 155n20

Watson, P., 151n29, 151n30 weaving, of Penelope, 42 “what if ” stories, 83, 95 wife: Briseis and, 62–81; Oenone as, 85; Ovid’s, 55–61 writing in wine, as elegiac activity, 43–44 Wyke, Maria, 8