Ovid - Heroides

Publius Ovidius Naso was born in 43 BC, and died in AD 17. He was educated in Rome where his studies were concentrated in the law and rhetoric. While such a background prepared him for a public career he also devoted himself to poetry. By about AD 8, he had become a prominent literary figure in Rome. That year he was banished to Tomis, a dismal provincial town on the Black Sea. The reasons for the exile are thought to be twofold, with general agreement that the contents of the Ars Amatoria as well as some other unspecified fault had greatly angered Augustus.

Ovid was a prolific writer who produced a number of long works that were widely read in his own day and in the centuries after his death. He devoted much of his poetic career to the subject of love and its effects. It is evident that Ovid sought immortal fame by abandoning the epic style of Virgil and devoting himself to a celebration of human experience. In all his works he explores human emotion, its causes and effects. Though writing in the period following the great achievements of Virgil and Horace, Ovid displayed a level of competence that is in no way diminished by comparison with the competence and accomplishment of his forebears. He did not follow in the footsteps of his immediate precedessors except to demonstrate his own richly independent genius. It should be noted that any attempt to establish a chronology of composition for the extant works of Ovid is certain to be frustrated. Though a consensus seems to have arisen among scholars, any evidence is necessarily fragmentary and too often inconclusive. For the most part it is possible to place various works sequentially in the chronology but at many points the placement becomes a matter of conjecture.

If it can be said that the Heroides as a unified work has a common subject matter, it is very simply the tension that exists between what is desired and what is possible within the context of love and erotic desire. Though this tension between what is wanted and what can actually be achieved is in every case doomed to be frustrated, each letter defines and describes the amorous experience in terms that are unique to the circumstances of its writer.

It is significant for an understanding of this work that one should be attentive to the narrative style. A narrator writing in the first person or epistolary style is necessarily confined; the narrative flows out of an individual experience with all its sensory and imaginative limitations. The progress of each letter, then, necessarily moves in ways that indicate the state of mind of the fictive character writing it. In every case the letter is the product of a mind which has come to some critical juncture. As the letter develops out of the uncertainty, even the terror, of crisis we perceive the minds expression as reflecting the minds distracted condition. While such a notion may seem a commonplace observation, it is essential to any understanding of Ovids accomplishment.

Very simply put, Ovid is not so much telling a story as he is fleshing out the bare bones of another authors minor character to reveal a depth and profundity of personality not inconsistent with the character we already know from other reading. The subject of Ovids sources can be confusing and complex in the extreme. One consideration, however, is important. In selecting the materials to be used Ovid ranged widely through the works available in his day. As well as a deep knowledge of Homer, he also shows a great familiarity with Greek and Roman drama and literature. Ovid has always been famous for his ability to use and manipulate mythological material, and he also displays a working knowledge of geography and astronomy. Clearly Ovid was a man of substantial learning who was able to adapt this to serve the task at hand.

Throughout the work there is a recurring concern with obligations and duties. But it is only seldom that any of Ovids characters find themselves torn between their obvious obligation to an existing contract of marriage and their desire for immediate gratification. The resolution of such a conflict takes a variety of forms but they are all, for the most part, rationalizations which insist that the ardour of passion has created its own obligation or necessity which now must be honoured. In the hands of these characters stability becomes a movable thing indeed. There is a recurring motif of legalism through many of the letters. There is talk of lawyers and suits, of what is owed and what is expected. Where the usual understanding of marriage has been that of a binding contract publicly executed before witnesses, there is now a strong attempt to apply the same form to desire and infatuation.