Introduction

Publius Ovidius Naso was one of the 'Augustan' writer, and he took pleasure in being part of a golden age of poetry in Rome. He was a prolific and versatile author and became much admired himself by younger poets. He is renowned as a love poet. In addition to the Heroides, he wrote the Amores, witty and amusing elegies about the ups and downs of his love life, especially with his beautiful mistress Corinna. The Heroides are twenty-one fictional letters in Latin verse. The first fifteen are addressed by women to men whom they love and from whom they are in some way separated, 1–14 are by mythological heroines, while 15 is by the Greek poetess Sappho. The Heroides also offer an elegiac retelling of stories common in epic and tragedy, with interesting and diverting spins to Ovid's sources.