ABSTRACT
After the last two mournful epistles Ovid produced by way of relief the amusing and outrageous Heroides 4 (in which he indulges in levity in connection with the grave crime of incest). This time we have a letter of seduction, as an older woman (who flatteringly refers to herself as a ‘girl’ in line 1 below) propositions a young man (her own stepson), trying to start rather than resume a relationship, and this time the writer is not physically separated from the addressee, but there is a gulf between them due to character and outlook.
