Vaiopoulus. Between Lament and Irony. Some Cross-References in Ovid's Heroides 6 and 12

Between Lament and Irony: Some Cross-references in Ovid's Heroides 6 and 12
Author(s): Vaios Vaiopoulos

Source: Mediterranean Studies, Vol. 21, No. 2 (2013), pp. 122-148
Published by: Penn State University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/mediterraneanstu.21.2.0122
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MS
Between Lament and Irony: Some
Cross-references in Ovid’s heroides 6 and 12
Vaios Vaiopoulos, Ionian University, Greece
abstract: After a short introduction to Ovid’s Heroides, this article focuses on certain cross-
references between Heroides 6 and 12. These two (fictitious) letters, the first, written by Hypsipyle,
the queen of Lemnos, and the second written by the Colchian princess, Medea, are addressed to
the same man, Jason. Before abandoning Medea in order to marry Creusa, Jason had already
abandoned Hypsipyle for Medea, or so Hypsipyle claims. This article shows the intertextual
complementarity of the two letters through the presentation of an imaginary communication
between the two heroines, as Medea seems to “answer” some points in Hypsipyle’s epistle.
keywords: Ovid, Heroides, Medea, Hypsipyle, irony
Introduction
Heroides
According to Ovid himself,1 he composed the first part of the Epistulae Heroidum
(The Letters of Heroines), better known as simply the Heroides (The Heroines),
shortly after the Amores (ca. 15–8 BC).2 These are fifteen (fictitious) letters from
mythological heroines, drawn from epic and tragedy, and written in elegiac
couplets.3 The collection is a particularly ingenious and fertile mixture of genres,4
which renews and regenerates the elegy by widening its scope, rather than by
exhausting its conventions.5 These imaginary letters are addressed to the heroines’
husbands or lovers, who for various reasons have abandoned them. In some cases,
these men have left their women in order to serve a higher duty; this heroic moti-
vation would have already been known to Ovid’s reading public from the epic and
tragic traditions. In other cases, however, these men bring from the genre of their
Mediterranean Studies, Vol. 21, No. 2, 2013

Copyright © 2013 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA
Cross-references in Ovid’s heroides 6 and 12 123
literary origin the innate characteristics of amorous infidelity and indifference, as

a consequence of which the abandoned heroines are “collateral erotic casualties”
of their lovers’ heroic action.
Most of the letters seek the return of the beloved to the empty love nest.6
A common leitmotif is the reneging on a nuptial or amorous promise and the
hope that this will be honored, albeit belatedly.7 Ovid’s originality lies in the
development of the letter writers’ petition in a way that promotes the subjective
and emotional values of elegy over the more heroic values of epic and tragedy,8
the genres in which these characters and their stories originated. The result is a
“renaissance” of these familiar literary characters in elegiac terms and specifica-
tions. This is essentially a reorientation of the mythological universe toward the
smaller and more personal emotions of elegiac love.9
Even though the setting within which the heroines write their letters is theoret-
ically the ancient world of epic or tragedy, the letters nonetheless convey an aroma
of the urban, Greco-Roman world of Ovid’s time. Penelope may write to Ulysses,
Phyllis to Demophoon, Briseis to Achilles, Phaedra to Hippolytus, Oenone to
Paris, Hypsipyle to Jason, Dido to Aeneas (she is the only heroine from Roman
epic), Hermione to Orestes, Deianira to Hercules, Ariadne to Theseus, Canace
to Macareus, Medea to Jason, Laodamia to Protesilaus, Hypermestra to Lynceus,
and finally Sappho to her lover Phaon (she is the only historical personage),10 yet
all of them sound more or less like contemporary lovers within the social milieu
of Augustan Rome.
Around 4–5 BC or slightly later (1 BC–AD 1), certainly not long before the
poet’s exile,11 Ovid completed the Heroides with three pairs of elegiac epistles.
The first letter in each pair is a (fictitious) letter sent by a male hero to his
female beloved, and the second is her reply, which is closely aligned with the
subjects introduced in the first letter.12 Thus, we have an epistle of Paris “sent”
to Helen and the latter’s response to Paris, a letter of Leander addressed to Hero
and her response to Leander, and finally a letter of Acontius to Cydippe and
her reply to Acontius.
Scholarship on the Heroides
It is true that for a long time the Epistulae remained on the margins of phil-
ological interest. Indeed, if the letters are treated exclusively as examples of
suasoria (a rhetorical exercise in which a historical figure supposedly considers
which course of action to take) or ἠθοποΐα (ethopoeia, a rhetorical exercise in
124 Vaios Vaiopoulos
which the writer impersonates a famous historical figure or literary character)13

as earlier research tended to do, or if they are judged on the criterion of their
“effectiveness” (i.e., whether the heroines derive any benefit from the epistolary
correspondence), they leave little leeway for their literary justification and are
regarded rather as less successful works by a poet with happier literary moments
to his credit.
More recently, however, interest in the position and the role of women has
steered research toward this somewhat misunderstood and undervalued Ovidian
collection. Ovid’s innovation has been better appreciated in the framework of
the growing interest in “women’s” subjects and gender studies. The description of
lovesickness from the masculine standpoint, known from traditional love elegy, is
now complemented by a (supposedly) feminine point of view,14 an initiative that
today attracts particular interest.
The contemporary psychoanalytical approach, moreover, has also contrib-
uted to the growing body of research on the Heroides. The collection penetrates
deeply into female psychology. In this regard, Ovid seems to have been strongly
influenced by Euripides,15 although the Roman poet also appears to have had
quite a vast knowledge of this subject on his own (with whatever possible reser-
vations the poetic personality of Ovid may impose).16 Our insights into the
psychology of the Heroides, one of the topics of Jacobson’s important book,17
have been enriched by the seminal works of other scholars, such as Spoth,18
who, by analyzing Ovid’s dependence on elegiac subjects, provided the basis
for our improved understanding of the parodic function of the collection by
means of the elegiac genre. Verducci, Spentzou, Rosati, Barchiesi, Jolivet, and
Fulkerson more recently have expanded research into other topics that have
long awaited attention.19 The interpretation of the Heroides on the basis of
psychology was perhaps the necessary first step for igniting greater scholarly
interest in the collection. Yet, in a poetic work so rich in metapoetic innuendo
and based on the use of refined poetic techniques of the “Neoteroi,”20 such as
the epyllion or mock epic (for example in Heroides 14) and etiology (the expla-
nation of causes), the analysis of these poems cannot possibly be limited to a
single dimension.21
In Ovid’s Heroides, the woman returns to the role of the person abandoned.
Earlier elegiac love poets, such as Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius, had portrayed
the woman as assuming the role of domina (mistress) and the man that of servus
(slave). Ovid’s reversal of these roles had social ramifications and repercussions as
well, since it was a particularly provocative phenomenon from the perspective of
these poets’ contemporary social reality.22
In the Heroides, Ovid assumes the role of the abandoned female, but of course
this does not mean that we read a genuine female voice. After all, the voice that
speaks is still that of a male author who has donned a female mask, although he
has completely submitted his male authority to the female script.23 Thus, it is
today’s postmodern aesthetic, with its penchant for embracing intertextuality and
the irony based on it, that has expanded interest in the collection and contributed
decisively to the evaluation of its many virtues and refined technique. The Ovidian
contribution to the nexus of woman, love, and letter writing,24 is today considered
to be of particular importance,25 thanks to Ovid’s masterful use of myth as his
principal poetic material,26 his skillful mixing of genres, and his handling of time.
Each epistle takes the form of a dramatic monologue (this technique had
appeared already in the Amores),27 in which elements of tragic, epic, and bucolic
poetry are utilized to advantage, while elements that will be encountered in the
novel also make their appearance, with intertextual allusions playing a critical role
in the poetic game. Past, present, and future are interwoven in such a way that
each myth, whether familiar or not to the reader, is recomposed within the frame-
work of the epistolary form. At the same time, thanks to Ovidian urbanity and
the letters’ metapoetic character, several of the letters are also attuned to modern
issues. For example, the supposed composers of some of the letters seem to carry
on an internal and continuous dialogue with the composers of other letters in the
same corpus. This dialogue is evident only to the informed reader, who is aware
of certain aspects of the myths that the letter writers themselves are presented as
not knowing. Thus, in the final analysis, this dialogue takes place within Ovid
himself.28 The result is the literary production of irony (intentionally, of course),
barely concealed in the context of a lament, in which it is placed.
The women’s almost provocative repetition of their grievances, the sameness
of tone that runs through the Heroides, the display of a rhetorical skill that is
doomed to failure (because of the predetermined plots) instead of the “genuine”
passion that the erotic subject would reasonably have demanded, the seemingly
ad nauseam flaunting of literary proficiency through a plethora of mythological
examples, and the selective utilization of specific details to support each hypothesis
would have been significant literary faults and oversights had they not functioned
as basic literary material for Ovid.29 The collection as a whole, as it unfolds, is a
re-creation and reformulation of the elegiac experience as it had been defined by
previous elegiac poets. Furthermore, the impact of this sequence also becomes
subversive, because the repetitions concern the one aspect in which elegiac
poetry has, by definition, always been considered unique, namely, the absolute
individualization of the erotic passion of the elegiac poet,30 who defines himself
programmatically as unius amoris servus (the slave of one and only love). Ovid, on
the other hand, utilizes all the elegiac clichés and the informed reader’s knowledge
of them, in order to reinvest them with irony, parody, and rich intertextual innu-
endoes. These literary techniques serve to justify their creator’s previous literary
reputation at the same moment as they renew it.
Irony within Lament
The present article endeavors to highlight some aspects of the irony that runs
through the collection. The material is drawn from Heroides 6 (Hypsipyle’s letter
to Jason) and Heroides 12 (Medea’s letter to Jason), as they have, unlike the rest of
the Heroides, the same man as their hypothetical recipient.31 Thus, these two letters
offer a unique basis for a comparative reading, providing exceptional opportuni-
ties for irony and intertextual references. The ironic tension, through the cross fire
of hints, reaches unprecedented heights, allowing metapoetic reflection.32 After
isolating those points at which these two letters actually seem to converse with one
another, this article will explore the literary result of this imagined conversation,
which is imperceptible for the supposed letter writers but which the informed
reader is encouraged to recognize.
In particular, Hypsipyle’s portrayal of Medea in the sixth epistle, in contrast to
Medea’s self-portrayal in the twelfth, sheds light on the mechanisms that activate
human subjectivity to all its extents and in all its manifestations: not only does
the poet not try to cover or mask Hypsipyle’s and Medea’s subjectivities, he even
exposes them in a flagrant way. One could even argue that the poet, who refuses to
project a unifying, integrating, or “objective” truth for the myth,33 presents instead
two competing versions for comparative consideration by the reader.34
Hypsipyle, queen of Lemnos, is brought in to the myth of the Argonauts by
the third-century Greek poet Apollonius, since the island of Lemnos is one of
Jason’s first ports of call en route to Colchis. In Apollonius’s Argonautica, Jason
and the Argonauts arrive at Lemnos soon after all the women of Lemnos have
killed all their male relatives (an event known in Greek myth as the androcide).
Hypsipyle, however, had secretly saved her father, Thoas, by hiding him in a chest
and sending him out to sea (Apollonius 1.609–26). Apollonius’s Hypsipyle, as is
appropriate to the epic framework of the poem, is given regal characteristics, but
her female identity is subservient to that of the heroic male. In accordance with
the traditional assumptions of the epic genre, Hypsipyle makes no demand that
Jason remain faithful; she does not even hint at marital exclusivity. Ovid, on the
other hand, presents the forsaken wife, Hypsipyle, as composing a letter to Jason
after he has returned to Greece accompanied by a new wife, Medea. Furthermore,
the spirit and the tone of the Ovidian letter have nothing of the regal dignity of
Apollonius’s heroine. In Heroides 6, after barely restraining her exasperation in
the opening lines, Hypsipyle goes on to fulminate against Jason as an unfaithful
foreigner, a perfidus hospes. She strongly protests the breaking of his promises of
everlasting erotic devotion, and she claims legitimacy as his official wife. After
that, she turns more than half her letter into a relentless attack on Medea, whom
she holds primarily responsible for Jason’s abandonment of her. By the end of
her letter, Hypsipyle has become, in terms of harshness, violence, and acerbity,
almost exactly like the woman she castigates, making Medea essentially the prin-
cipal character in the letter.
The introduction of subjective love into the story known from Apollonius,
which had a weak erotic dimension, is Ovid’s innovation. A natural consequence
of this is the inclusion of all the components of lovesickness known from the
traditional elegiac corpus. The dignified queen, Hypsipyle, who in Apollonius had
merely helped Jason continue his epic voyage and had not even thought about
trying to delay it (as was the case with Calypso and Circe in the Odyssey and with
Dido in the Aeneid), has been turned into a jealous, hurtful, and deceiving wife,
who rants most vehemently against her rival.
On the contrary, Heroides 12, which Medea is supposed to address to Jason at
a crucial moment in their story, shortly before her tragic murder of their children,
even though it is again a letter from an abandoned woman to the unfaithful and
ungrateful male, deals much less with Medea’s rival, Creusa, than Hypsipyle dealt
with Medea herself as rival. By contrast to what happens in Euripides’s tragedy,
Medea, where the erotic element is essentially absent from a tragic and heroic
Medea intent on revenge in accordance with the values of the epic-tragic world,
the Medea of Heroides 12 is still in love with Jason. To the very last moment she
hopes for her adulterous lover’s return to the love nest; she is still a woman in
love, shortly before she is transformed into the well-known Medea of tragedy and
murder. The elegiac clichés succeed one another, as is the case in all the letters,
adapted of course to this specific myth, before the reader becomes aware that this
Medea is unlike all previous Medeas. This Medea, like Hypsipyle, will resound as
the quaevis amantes, the everyday erotic characters of Ovid’s Rome, and not as the
tragic heroine of Euripides.
Furthermore, the parallel study of epistles 6 and 12 reveals an irony created
exactly because the behavior and argumentation shared by both heroines
undermine the validity of each of their positions. One reason for this is that
the reader is assumed to possess an overall understanding of the myth; in fact,

insufficient knowledge of this myth by the readers would result in their seeing
the epistles as a dull enumeration of conventional complaints and a meaning-
less repetition of elegiac topoi.35 Another factor that weakens the validity of the
heroines’ arguments is the fact that they each seem to have a greater knowledge
of the plot than they should logically be able to have. At the same time, the
intertextual knowledge shared by each of the supposed authors of the epistles,
which even enables Hypsipyle to cite an “Alexandrian footnote” (as happens
with narratur in Heroides 6.19)36, corroborates this impression. Let us examine
four indicative cases.
1. The Beginning of Medea’s Letter (Heroides 12.1–2)
At tibi Colchorum, memini, regina vacavi,

ars mea cum peteres ut tibi ferret opem.37
But I, the queen of Colchis, could find time for you, I remember,
when you asked that my art might bring you help.38
The beginning of Medea’s letter is extremely abrupt, summarizing the entire

monologue with a preliminary expression of her royal rage and providing
a reminder of the differences in origin between herself and Jason, thus inter-
weaving memory with complaint.39 Medea’s address to Jason occurs within the
framework of a hypothetical dialogue-debate between herself and her lover
that seems to have started some time ago. At first sight, this address may seem
to be a reference to or a continuation of her Euripidean debate with Jason and
might connect the letter with the beginning of Euripides’s Medea, when the
two spouses have not met yet.40
Thus, in the first line the heroine seems to be replying to or simply addressing
Jason. Yet, at the same time she is making a complaint that is reminiscent of the
one that had previously been made by Hypsipyle to the same man at the start of
the sixth epistle:
gratulor incolumi, quantum sinis; hoc tamen ipsum

debueram scripto certior esse tuo. (Heroides 6.3–4)
I rejoice for your safety, as far as you allow me; nevertheless

I should have been informed of this by a letter of your own.
quamlibet adverso signatur epistula vento.

Hypsipyle missa digna salute fui. (Heroides 6.7–8)
But a letter is sealed [i.e., it can be sent] even in adverse winds.

I, Hypsipyle, was worthy of being sent a greeting.
The complaint made by both women has to do with Jason’s “unavailability.”

He “couldn’t even make the time” to write a short letter to Hypsipyle so as to
inform her of his salvation.
In other words, Hypsipyle’s accusation against Jason, similar to the one that
will later be made by Medea, was basically that the Thessalian non vacavit; “he did
not have time for her”. The complaint made by both women thus confirms at the
same time the elegiac identity of the static/passive mistress, an identity shared by
both Hypsipyle, the queen of Lemnos, and Medea, the princess of Pontus. The
two letters also confirm the epic features of an active and vigorous heroic literary
figure, that of Jason, who neither stops to write about his epic action and narrate
glorious deeds (κλέα)41 nor postpones the reactivation of his love life so as to listen
to or read elegiac complaints and pleas.
The second line of Heroides 12 seems to continue the imaginary dialogue that
takes place between this epistle and epistle 6. Thus, while Medea seems to still be
addressing Jason, she indirectly answers some of the charges that Hypsipyle had
uttered against her in epistle 6. Ovid’s novelty consists, among other things, in
presenting Hypsipyle (for the first time in the history of literature) as being fully
aware of all of Jason’s adventures after he left her behind on Lemnos.42 Thus, in the
second line of epistle 12 (“when you wanted my art to bring help to you”), Medea
seems to answer Hypsipyle’s accusation that she literally (and not metaphorically)
enchanted Jason.
The motif of magic is introduced in Hypsipyle’s letter referring to Medea but
not in the way this motif is conventionally used in amatory vocabulary. Hypsipyle
does not talk about the “magic power of love,” using the vocabulary of magic to
describe the effects of love, but instead she implies that real magic has been used
by Medea in order to capture Jason:
barbara narratur venisse venefica tecum,

in mihi promissi parte recepta tori. (Heroides 6.19–20)
They say that a barbarian woman, a sorceress, has come with you,
and shares the marriage bed that was promised to me.
In epistle 12, Medea drives the motif of magic back to its conventional elegiac
meaning. In her letter, the metaphorical love magic is cast upon her, presented as
an inexperienced maiden; and Jason is the one who performs magic on her:
abstulerant oculi lumina nostra tui. (Heroides 12.36)43

your eyes had robbed mine of their light.
The impression that there is an imaginary conversation between Medea and

Hypsipyle is reinforced by Medea’s insistence in epistle 12.2 (quoted above) that
it was Jason who pursued a relationship with her, pursuing her for her magic,
and that she herself did not win him with her magic, as the Lemnian woman
had implied in epistle 6.19, aptly exploiting the implied etymological relationship
between the term venefica (a female poisoner, sorceress, or witch) and Venus—the
field of love.44 Hypsipyle goes on to theorize about the legitimacy (or lack of it) of
using magic in the game of love:
. . . male quaeritur herbis

moribus et forma conciliandus amor. (Heroides 6.93–94)
. . . love is wrongly sought by herbs

[love that] should be won by virtue and by beauty.
In these lines, Hypsipyle interlaces the epic ideal of καλοκαγαθία (kalokagathia,

a combination of goodness, nobility and beauty) with love. Hypsipyle’s tone
announces in advance the erotic teaching that Ovid will later put forward with
burlesque formality in Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love) or in reference to Medicamina
Faciei (Cosmetics for the Female Face).45
Hypsipyle’s accusation that Medea used magic as a love weapon is partic-
ularly significant because this element is one of Ovid’s contributions. The
Lemnian presents a detailed account of Medea’s magical power in Heroides
6.83–92, because she wants to establish the impression that it was through this
power that Medea managed to attract Jason. Neither Euripides nor Apollonius
relates the Colchian’s well-known abilities in the field of magic to her love affair
with him. In previous accounts of the myth, Medea’s magical power had been
used only to help the hero carry out his tasks; her magical powers had been
totally separated from her love story. In fact, Pindar and Hyginus present Jason
as capturing Medea’s love by using magic (or through Venus’s interference),
and not the other way around.46 It will be Valerius Flaccus (7.488–89), who
will later follow Ovid’s version, presenting Medea as employing magic to
make Jason love her.47 Thus the reversal of this tradition by Ovid permits
the imaginary conversation between Medea and Hypsipyle, her hypothetical
Lemnian rival.48
From the very beginning of her letter, Medea replies not only to a Jason who
refuses to address her, but also to Hypsipyle’s letter, which she logically could not
possibly have read.49
2. Jason’s Ingratia (Ingratitude)
The dialogue between the Colchian and the Lemnian women continues with
Medea’s adoption of Hypsipyle’s entire argument concerning her own meritum
(kindness, benefit, favor) and Jason’s ingratitude. Hypsipyle has offered Jason her
hospitality and also prayed for his salvation:
urbe virum iuvi, tectoque animoque recepi. (Heroides 6.55)

I helped the man with my city, I admitted him into my house and my heart.
adde preces castas inmixtaque vota timori—

nunc quoque te salvo persolvenda mihi.
vota ego persolvam? votis Medea fruetur!
cor dolet, atque ira mixtus abundat amor.
dona feram templis, vivum quod Iasona perdo?
hostia pro damnis concidat icta meis? (Heroides 6.73–78)
Add chaste prayers and vows mixed with fear,

which now I must fulfill, since you are safe.
Shall I full the vows? Medea will enjoy the fruits of my vows!
My heart is in pain, love overflows, mixed as it is with wrath.
Shall I take gifts to the temples because Jason lives, even though I am losing him?
Should a victim fall beneath my stroke because of my loss?
Medea, on the other side, will openly accuse Jason of ingratitude:
Est aliqua ingrato meritum exprobrare voluptas. (Heroides 12.21)

It is some pleasure to reproach an ungrateful person with favors done.
numen ubi est? ubi di? meritas subeamus in alto,

tu fraudis poenas, credulitatis ego! (Heroides 12.119–20)
Where is the power of gods? Where are the gods? Let us fully suffer the
penalty we deserve,
you for your fraud and me for my credulity!
Ut culpent alii, tibi me laudare necesse est,

pro quo sum totiens esse coacta nocens. (Heroides 12.131–32)
Others may blame me, but you must praise me,

you for whom I was forced, so often, to commit a crime.
quod vivis, quod habes nuptam socerumque potentis,

hoc ipsum, ingratus quod potes esse, meum est. (Heroides 12.205–6)
That you are still alive, that you have a wife and father-in-law of kingly station,
that you are able to be ungrateful, you owe it to me.
Apart from all this, it is obvious that the entire narratio of Jason’s adventures
(Heroides 12.23–130) aims at making Jason’s ingratitude obvious and provocative.
Medea’s attempt in epistle 12 to prove male ingratitude, practically follow-
ing Hypsipyle’s example, unfolds the similitudes of her cause with those of the
Lemnian before the reader’s eyes.
Along with the issue of the ingratia, the Ovidian novelty of the hypothetical
“rivalry” between Hypsipyle and Medea is also brought to the foreground. In
epistle 6, Hypsipyle connects her argument concerning Jason’s ingratitude to a
discussion about marriage and marital rights; the lines Heroides 6.17, 41–44,
59–62 openly talk about the marital bonds by which Hypsipyle and Jason are
connected. Yet, while Hypsipyle talks about marriage and conjugal rights and
the nuptial ceremonies made sacred by Juno and Hymen, she strengthens and
even ratifies her “rival’s” argumentation; these same arguments will be repeated
by Medea in her own epistle 12, completely ignorant of her own role in taking
Jason away from the Lemnian queen. But is she really that ignorant? Medea
will insist on her married status, thus presenting a conjugal claim that is the
same as Hypsipyle’s; but her claim seems more reliable than Hypsipyle’s, as
Medea will put all information about her marriage into Jason’s own mouth.
In the following passage from epistle 12, Medea recalls how Jason, standing in
Diana’s shrine, had promised to marry her in return for her help in obtaining
the Golden Fleece:
quodsi forte virum non dedignare Pelasgum—

sed mihi tam faciles unde meosque deos?—
spiritus ante meus tenues vanescet in auras
quam thalamo nisi tu nupta sit ulla meo!
conscia sit Iuno sacris praefecta maritis,
et dea marmorea cuius in aede sumus! (Heroides 12.83–88)
If there is a chance that you don’t disdain a Pelasgian husband—

but how can I hope that the gods will be so favorable toward me?—
my spirit will vanish into thin air before
another woman than you enters my chamber as a bride!
Let Juno be my witness, having authority over conjugal rites,
and the goddess in whose marble shrine we are standing!
Within this perspective, Medea’s arguments about how the sanctity of her
marriage to Jason has been violated by Jason’s new wedding sound even more
ironic. On the one hand, Medea, as a composer of the twelfth epistle, exploits
arguments already formulated by her “rival.” On the other hand, Medea’s argu-
mentation undermines her own complaint: Medea complains that she suffers
because of Jason’s new wife, Creusa, the very thing that Hypsipyle had suffered
because of her. This dimension is totally absent from Euripides’s treatment,
according to which Medea is the only person harmed by Jason’s perfidy. In
Ovid, Medea sounds like a woman complaining of an injustice that she herself
had previously committed against Hypsipyle, in the same collection. Before
Medea herself was deceived, she had been the reason for Jason’s deceit against
Hypsipyle. If, as is likely, the beginning of Medea’s letter (Heroides 12) is inten-
tionally related to the opening of Hypsipyle’s letter (Heroides 6), an imaginary
mental discourse between the two heroines is presented before the reader’s eyes,
and Medea is angry at being deprived of a man who already “belonged” to
another woman, Hypsipyle. Thus, in Heroides 12, it is now Medea’s turn to be
in the position of the puella deserta (a woman deserted) by Jason, for the sake
of a new bride.
This “dialogue” between Hypsipyle and Medea regarding erotic infidelity and
rivalry is further accentuated, as Medea uses the term paelex (a pejorative term for
the concubine of a married man, sometimes with the connotation of prostitute
or whore) to refer to Creusa. This happens to be the same word that Hypsipyle
had used twice to refer to Medea herself in the sixth epistle. In the following two
examples from the sixth epistle, Hypsipyle uses the word paelex to refer to Medea:
. . . nocuit mihi barbara paelex! (Heroides 6.81)

. . . a barbarian prostitute has ruined me!
paelicis ipsa meos inplessem sanguine vultus. (Heroides 6.149)

I myself would have covered my face with the blood of that whore.
In the following passage from epistle 12, Medea uses the word paelex to refer to
Jason’s new bride, Creusa:
quos ego servavi, paelex amplectitur artus. (Heroides 12.173)

A concubine now embraces the limbs I saved.
Medea’s seemingly coincidental use of the same derogatory term (paelex)50 in

reference to Creusa, her new rival, which Hypsipyle had used to describe Medea,
is obvious to the reader of the collection, who is well aware of what Medea seems
to be unaware of; that this characterization had been previously used to describe
Medea herself. The term, apart from describing a female rival, also suggests
social inferiority, which increases the irony, since Hypsipyle fears being rejected
by Jason’s parents for her “lower” origin, while Medea uses the term against the
daughter of a Greek king, while being within his kingdom.51
Thus, Medea’s unawareness of Hypsipyle—since the former does not mention
or even seem to know the latter—is apparent, and it is her innocent ignorance
of Jason’s “burdened” romantic past that creates the irony.52 Medea’s prima facie
indifference toward her predecessor permits the literary dialogue to increase the
irony, as the reader is fully aware of what the heroine is presented by the poet to
be unaware of. As the Colchian princess exploits all the argumentation previously
used by Hypsipyle against herself, she creates an imaginary dialogue with Hypsipyle
before the reader’s eyes. Ovid of course knows that the reader knows that Medea is
intentionally presented by the poet as ignorant of her “rival’s” argumentation.
Irony is also reinforced by the fact that Hypsipyle herself subtly reminds the
reader of Medea’s presence when she recalls her supposed marriage to Jason:
at mihi nec Iuno, nec Hymen, sed tristis Erinys

praetulit infaustas sanguinolenta faces. (Heroides 6.45–46)
And yet neither Juno nor Hymen, but wretched Erinys,

bloody, carried before me the unpropitious (wedding) torches.
In this passage, Hypsipyle remembers that it was not Juno or Hymen who had
attended their wedding but Erinys.53 The informed reader might mistake the
reference to Erinys for Medea, if she or he remembers the passage in Euripides’s
Medea 1258–60, where Medea is called a τάλαιναν φονίαν ’Eρινύν (a wretched,
bloody Erinys). This intertextual hint, which only the learned reader would
understand,54 could offer a reasonable explanation of the use of singular (Erinys)
in Heroides 6 in place of the plural (Erinyes), which is more commonly used.
Furthermore, the reference functions in an ironic sense on many tragic levels,
as it foreshadows the collapse of Hypsipyle’s marriage caused by Medea-Erinys,
and presents the Lemnian woman as unaware of the dark potential of her rela-
tionship with Jason, despite the negative signs that only in retrospect is she able
to interpret correctly. The use of the word Ερινύς by Medea in Apollonius’s
Argonautica 3.776 (Fraenkel), in reference to the Argonauts’ arrival in Colchis,55
offers another intertextual hint, as it marks the reversal of the protagonists in the
roles of the deceiver and the deceived.56
3. Two Carmina Composers
Medea, in epistle 12, although she is ironically self-undermining, presents

remarkable narrative and rhetorical skills that allow her to provide multiple
answers to several interlocutors simultaneously, a legacy of her Euripidean iden-
tity. But Medea’s abilities are not limited to positive literary skills; she is also well
versed in deliberate deception and falsification.
The transformation of her great Euripidean rhetorical skill into sly omissions,
concealments, omissions, and falsifications is indicative of the difference of tone
that characterizes the two genres (tragedy vs. elegiac poetry). Medea’s epistle is full
of imprecise details that the heroine intentionally includes in her self-portrayal
as a rejected mistress. She carefully selects all the elements she needs from the
story, the facts and the literary tradition, in order to present a version that is the
most convenient for her. In a similar way, according to Hypsipyle’s testimony, she
selects the bones that are necessary for the production of black magic.57
From the identity that was formed for her in Apollonius’s Argonautica, Medea
takes on a highly romantic dimension, which is necessary for her integration
into elegy.58 As she takes on this new characteristic, she distorts details known
from Apollonius’s narration; for example, she downplays her dilemmas and her
wavering between duty (whether patriotic, familial, or parental) and the passion
of love. Such wavering would weaken her love-related arguments and the epistle’s
dimension as an erotic suasoria.59
In epistle 12, Medea tries to build the image of a gullible, benevolent, inno-
cent maid. In this framework she obsessively invokes her virginity (virgo, 12.81;
virginitas, 12.111),60 as well as her girlish innocence and inexperience in love.
tunc ego te vidi, tunc coepi scire, quid esses;

illa fuit mentis prima ruina meae.
et vidi et perii; nec notis ignibus arsi,
ardet ut ad magnos pinea taeda deos.
et formosus eras, et me mea fata trahebant;
abstulerant oculi lumina nostra tui.
perfide, sensisti—quis enim bene celat amorem?
eminet indicio prodita flamma suo. (Heroides 12.31–38)
It was then that I saw you, then I began to know what you might be;
that was the first ruin of my mind.
I saw you and I perished; I burnt not with ordinary fires,
but as a pine-torch might burn before the mighty gods.
And you were handsome, and my fate was dragging me to doom;
your eyes had robbed mine of their light.
You saw it, faithless! For who can hide love well?
Love’s betraying flame is revealed by its own evidence.
Haec animum—et quota pars haec sunt!—movere puellae

simplicis, et dextrae dextera iuncta meae.
vidi etiam lacrimas—sua pars et fraudis in illis.
sic cito sum verbis capta puella tuis. (Heroides 12.89–92)
Words like these—and how much of it is here—moved the heart of the

naïve girl, and your right hand clasped with mine.
I even saw tears—a part of the deception was in them.
So quickly I, only a girl, became captivated by your words.
ipsa ego, quae dederam medicamina, pallida sedi,

cum vidi subitos arma tenere viros. (Heroides 12.97–98)
I, who had given you the charms, sat pallid there,

when I saw these men, suddenly arisen, holding arms.
Medea’s reference to herself as a puella simplex (simple girl, 12.89–90),61 although

at the same time she is paradoxically presented as docta (learned),62 may be a char-
acterization referring to her character in Apollonius’s Argonautica,63 but it surely
puzzles the reader who is familiar with her Euripidean identity. Irony naturally
emerges when we hear or read the declarations of a person who is notorious for
her crimes, declarations through which she confesses that her only flaws are sensi-
tivity and vulnerability (while at the same time keeping her cynicism intact).64
Medea’s self-portrait is carefully based on the invocation of the supposed terror
she felt when, as a naïve and inexperienced girl, she watched Jason plough the
field with the teeth of a dragon (Heroides 12.95–98). Thus Medea subtly and clev-
erly constructs the evidence for her fragile nature.65 It is worth noting that Ovid’s
Medea has created this role for herself, since according to Apollonius,66 she was
not even present during the accomplishment of Jason’s heroic achievements.67
Regarding her magical abilities, Medea will—quietly and conveniently—put
the blame on Jason for the horrible consequences of her witchcraft, even when she
confesses to instigating murders, slaying her own flesh and blood,68 and (literally)
cooking her relatives by others’ hands:
at non te fugiens sine me, germane, reliqui!

deficit hoc uno littera nostra loco.
quod facere ausa mea est, non audet scribere dextra.
sic ego, sed tecum, dilaceranda fui. (Heroides 12.113–16)
But, my brother, I did not abandon you, as I fled!

In this one place my letter is lacking.
My right hand does not dare to write what it dared to do.
So should I have been torn apart, but with you!
Quid referam Peliae natas pietate nocentes

caesaque virginea membra paterna manu?
ut culpent alii, tibi me laudare necesse est,
pro quo sum totiens esse coacta nocens. (Heroides 12.129–32)
Why should I speak of the daughters of Pelias, harming him through

their devotion,
of their father’s members slaughtered by virgin hands?
Others may blame me, but you must praise me,
you for whom I was forced, so often, to commit a crime.
On the murder of her brother, Absyrtus, referenced in Medea’s epistle (12.113–16),

we should note Ovid’s departure from Apollonius’s treatment; Ovid adopts a version
according to which Absyrtus is Medea’s brother from both their parents, a germa-
nus, and not a half-brother, as in Apollonius’s Argonautica 3.241–44.69 This slight
modification introduced by the Ovidian Medea is intended to support her effort
to gain Jason back, and for this purpose she does not hesitate to silently distort
Apollonius’s mythological “truth”: if Medea had been willing to slaughter a germa-
nus, then Medea’s crime for Jason’s sake was even more serious, and, consequently,
Jason should have been even more grateful toward her.
Apart from this, Medea ingeniously masks her capacity as poisoner (what
Hypsipyle calls barbara venefica, a barbarian female poisoner) with medical jargon
and modernistic scientia (scientific knowledge),70 which reinforces the (false)
etymology of her own name.71 Medea presents her witchcraft as a type of medicine:
quaeque feros pepuli doctis medicatibus ignes. (Heroides 12.165)
I, who could beat back fierce fires with learned drugs.
The word doctis (learned) that modifies medicatibus (drugs) implies that Medea is
equated to the rest of the elegiac puellae (girlfriends) in the same collection, not
only through being deserted by an unfaithful lover and through her simplicity
and naïveté, but also because she is identified as being docta or learned to a higher
degree than the rest of the Heroides. The erudition of the other fourteen female
protagonists consists in the way they are capable of creating and understanding
literary allusions, being familiar with literary tradition. In addition to this, Medea
possesses an ars (art): not only does she refer to her skill in magic as an ars (12.2
and 12.167), she also emphasizes the “medical” dimension of her activity.72 At
the same time, she constantly avoids using the word venenum (poison). She uses
this word only in 12.180, and exclusively with regard to Creusa. This is a de facto
answer to Hypsipyle’s accusation that Medea is a venefica (poisoner). Medea’s
use of medical terminology aims to change what Hypsipyle had called Medea’s
“poisonous skill” (Heroides 6.101, 6.131, cf. 6.19) into an ars (see Heroides 12.2,
12.167, and cf. 12.50). On the other hand, the terminology of poison is totally in
accordance with Euripides’s language in his Medea,73 and Apollonius’s treatment
of her in the Argonautica.74
In Medea’s case, the twofold meaning found in the process of weaving, with the
comparison of the textile to the literary textum (text), which is found throughout
the entire collection,75 takes on an additional dimension. Medea’s textum will be the
result of her ability to combine specific ingredients—words and episodes, arguments

and sounds—in the same way she successfully combined ingredients in the field of
magic according to Hypsipyle in epistle 6. Medea selected the appropriate and essen-
tial ingredients for her black-magic alchemies at the right place and the right time,
and mixed them in an appropriate (decorus) way, exactly as the composer of a literary
textum would do. Medea’s poem (carmen)76 will be different from her magic carmina
(charms), the synthesizing ability of which has been unanimously acknowledged by
the literary tradition, as Hypsipyle emphasizes when she states in Heroides 6.83 that
Medea carmina novit (knows magic charms). Thus, while Hypsipyle is justified in
her respect for Medea’s skills in magic and incantations (carmina), Medea, in epistle
12, transforms her incantations into elegiac carmina (poems). From Medea’s point
of view, her magic is strictly verbal, serving only to embellish her elegiac letter. The
presence of irony is felt from the moment the reader is in the position to detect
Medea’s distortion of the inherited mythological “truth.”
Yet, in this distortion of the past or intentional concealment of its negative aspects,
Hypsipyle has come first. That is, in epistle 6, the Ovidian Hypsipyle demonstrates
a selectiveness that is similar to Medea’s. Thus, Hypsipyle borrows only those specific
elements from the literary tradition that serve her argument. In her torrent of accusa-
tions against Medea and her depiction of the latter as a sorceress, Hypsipyle “neglects”
to mention her own involvement in Jason’s protection. In Apollonius’s Argonautica,
Jason, while accomplishing his tasks in Colchis, is wearing a garment she had offered
to him. And, what is more, although Hypsipyle knows of Absyrtus’s murder by the
couple, she never mentions that another garment, a gift given to Jason by her, had
been used by the Thessalian as a bait to lure the young man to the deadly trap, as
Apollonius informs us (Argonautica 3.1203–6, 4.424–34).77
Furthermore, while Hypsipyle declares that she will become a “Medea” (to
Medea), she has in fact already become a kind of “Medea,” though on a smaller
scale. Her participation in the androcide on the island of Lemnos was not in
the least bit minor, even if she did spare her father. So, while she accuses Medea
of being a murderous witch, she omits any reference to her participation in the
Λήμνια κακά (Lemnian evils, i.e., the androcide). Her oblique reference at
Heroides 6.53 gives us an idea of what is omitted:
Lemniades viros, nimium quoque, vincere norunt.

The women of Lemnos know (all too well) how to conquer men.
These ominous interferences of Hypsipyle into the Jason-Medea story are cen
sored by the Lemnian, as she depicts herself as an innocent and virtuous woman
(rather than a queen) deceived by a perfidus hospes (deceitful stranger/guest).

Medea similarly depicts herself in Heroides 12 as a virtuous, innocent, and almost
naïve girl, a king’s daughter, deceived and betrayed by the same traitorous man,
hiding all her magical, poisonous, and murderous activities under a medical
terminology.78 Through her selective use of the past, in combination with the
concealment of elements that are not in her favor, Hypsipyle demonstrates the
same selective ability that characterizes her “opponent” in the field of magic, when
she accuses Medea of carefully selecting the right bones and ingredients for her
magic rituals (Heroides 6.89–90).
4. Devotiones (Curses)
The irony surely soars when Hypsipyle has in the end been practically transformed
into “Medea” (although she is presented by Ovid as totally unaware of this meta-
morphosis), as she in practice adopts one of her rival’s magic practices, that of the
curse. Medea, according to Hypsipyle’s epistle, devovet absentes (curses those who
are absent; Heroides 6.91).79 But Heroides 6 is itself full of curses against Medea. In
6.153–62 Hypsipyle wishes (1) that Medea will be abandoned by Jason, (2) that
she will be left alone with her children, (3) that Medea will leave her children in
a worse condition, (4) that Medea will become an exile and be forced to seek a
refuge through the entire world, (5) that she will become bitter to her children and
husband to the same degree she has been bitter to her father and her brother, and
finally (6) that when she has no hope of refuge by land or sea, she will be forced to
try the air, wandering hopeless and destitute.
The irony is that Hypsipyle’s curses actually work; this means that, in fact,
Hypsipyle has become an effective “Medea.” As the reader knows from Euripides’s
Medea, after Jason abandons her,80 Medea will be ordered by Creon to leave from
Corinth;81 she will kill her children and thus harm her husband in the worst
manner imaginable;82 she will become an exile; and, lacking a way of escape
through land and sea,83 she will take refuge in the air.84
The ironic element is found in the illusion that Hypsipyle’s letter is of the active
type, that is, her letter propels and promotes the action,85 since the reader knows
that the future course of events will be brought about regardless of Hypsipyle’s
curses, which are, after all, mentioned nowhere else in ancient literature. The exag-
geration in seriousness and fierceness in tone of these curses generates a comic
result, because the reader knows that what is a conviction for Hypsipyle—the
effectiveness of her curses—is actually an illusion; the development in the course
of events is not defined by her, contrary to what she believes.
The tone is reminiscent of the way that Ariadne curses Theseus, in Catullus’s
Carmen 64.188–201 (Thomsen). In this passage, Ariadne prays to the gods and to
the Eumenides to punish Theseus, who has abandoned her. Her curses sound ironic
in the same way that Hypsipyle’s are. Both Ariadne in Carmen 64 and Hypsipyle in
Heroides 6 are convinced that they are creating a terrible end for their men, while
the reader is aware that the plot of the myths has already been established. The only
difference is that the accomplishment of Ariadne’s curses is immediate; it comes
right after the curses in the same poem, Carmen 64.202–48. Ariadne’s invocation
of the gods and of the Eumenides is presented as the “real” cause of Aegeus’s death,
while Ariadne’s lamentation will be balanced by Aegeus’s lament for Theseus.86 In
Hypsipyle’s case, the reader must look back to a Greek play (Euripides’s Medea),
which belongs to another genre, for the accomplishment of her curses. It is also
interesting that in Heroides 10 the Ovidian Ariadne does not curse Theseus and lets
Hypsipyle imitate the Catullan Ariadne, cursing the unfaithful male. The connection
of Ariadne with Hypsipyle could easily be recalled by the reader; and the fact that
the first is an ancestor of the latter would have made this connection more obvious.87
The reader might also notice that the Catullan Ariadne at first asks for the
gods’ assistance to vindicate Theseus, and then passes to the Eumenides’ help in
particular, as vengeance is their proper “domain.”88 But, as the Eumenides/Furies
are allied with Medea (see above), Hypsipyle prefers to invoke Jupiter alone to
accomplish her curses.89
In fact, the irony builds up even more due to Hypsipyle’s invocation of
Jupiter, a deity who is rarely employed for the reinforcement of defixiones
(curses), for the fulfillment of her curse. The invocation of Jupiter fits in with
the Lemnian’s social position and highlights both her royal capacity and her
descent from the father of the gods of Olympus: Hypsipyle is the granddaugh-
ter of Bacchus and Ariadne, thus Zeus is among her ancestors, while she is also
Aeolus’s granddaughter on her mother’s (Myrina) side.90 Medea, on the other
hand, is protected by the deities of the Underworld; Medea’s deities, therefore,
could not possibly be allies with Hypsipyle. By invoking the god of Olympus,
Hypsipyle unknowingly allies herself with Aeёtes (Medea’s father), who invokes
Helios and Zeus as he curses Jason and Medea during their escape from Colchis,
according to Apollonius (Argonautica 4.228–30). Thus Hypsipyle continues
to exploit the subtext in order to widen and enforce her curses; she becomes
identified with a well-known enemy of Medea and Jason, and thus her persona
constitutes a revival of Aeёtes as pursuer.91 In addition, it is under the identity
of Zeus the Purifier (Ζεὺς καθάρσιος) that Zeus will fulfill Hypsipyle’s curse
in Argonautica 4.557–61 and 698–717. Clearly, the reader must have proper
knowledge of the intertext to understand the irony, since the ending of the
myth, which is known from Apollonius’s earlier narration, ironically appears to
be the result of Hypsipyle’s curse, which is validated by Zeus.
However, the intertextual dialogue that is realized here concerns also another
point in Apollonius’s narration. In Apollonius 4.95–98, Jason, too, swears by Zeus
and Hera that he will marry Medea.92 Irony emerges, since Hypsipyle swears to the
same god (Jupiter) who, although supposedly presiding over the union of Medea
and Jason, does not punish the latter for perjury, when he deserted the Colchian
for the sake of a new love. Ovid refers to this in his Ars Amatoria:
Iuppiter ex alto periuria ridet amantum,

et iubet Aeolios inrita ferre notos. (Ars Amatoria 1.633–34)
Jupiter from above smiles at the perjuries of lovers,

and commands the Aeolian winds to carry them away unfulfilled.
The reader’s first thought may be that Hypsipyle’s curses will also remain unful-
filled, since Jupiter did not stand behind Jason’s vows. However, this time Jupiter
is destined to fulfill his role as punisher and καθάρσιος. As the reader knows from
Apollonius’s Argonautica 4.557–61, Jupiter will punish Medea and Jason for their
crimes; according to Argonautica 4.698–717, he sends them to Circe’s palace to
get themselves purified. Thus, the reader could be left with the impression that
Jason’s punishment is due to Hypsipyle’s curse, this time heeded by the father
of the gods. In calling upon Jupiter to fulfill her curse, Hypsipyle might seem
to ignore Jupiter’s indifference to Jason’s broken conjugal oaths, but the reader
who perceives Ovid’s intertextual references can appreciate Jupiter’s stance in both
cases. If the reader has Jupiter’s initial indifference in mind, she or he will enjoy the
final ironic twist, namely, that the punishment imposed upon Jason and Medea in
Apollonius’s epic is the result of Hypsipyle’s curses in Ovid’s (later) elegiac verses.
So the wishes, curses and patron gods are brought back in a circular fashion in
relation to different suppliants each time, while Ovid uses the text of Apollonius’s
Argonautica as an essential subtext for the reader’s comprehension of his poem.
Conclusions
Outlined in this article are just some of the points at which, beyond Euripides
or Apollonius, letter 6 of Ovid’s Heroides is predicated as subtext for the read-
er’s full understanding of letter 12. I have attempted to show the intertextual
complementarity of both letters through the enhancement of an imaginary

dialogue that seems to exist, even though this communication between the two
letters is not overtly expressed. This dialogue takes place on the initiative of Medea,
who has the privilege of “answering” Hypsipyle, since her letter comes after the
latter’s in the same collection.
The opening of Medea’s letter offers a sample of the heroine’s intention of
answering the Lemnian queen in the framework of this silent dialogue, which
exists because both women use essentially the same arguments against Jason and
express the same complaints of infidelity against him. The sense of communication
between the two letters is also reinforced by the two heroines’ ironic presentation
of themselves in the dual roles of rivals and betrayed lovers.
The essential assimilation of Medea and Hypsipyle, due to their both being
victimized within the framework of elegiac love, is strengthened even further by
their symmetrical distortion of mythological “events,” which the reader knows
from previous versions of the myth. The reader, of course, has been sufficiently
prepared for Medea’s ability to use rhetorical skills from her role in Euripides’s
Medea. But the placement of Hypsipyle’s letter before Medea’s in the collection
has several ironic effects. Not only does Hypsipyle silence elements unfavorable
to her position and introduce new aspects of the myth that the reader encounters
here for the first time, she also adopts the very practices that she herself has noted
as hallmarks of Medea, namely that of pronouncing curses upon her enemies,
adversaries, and rivals. And, in a further irony, Hypsipyle’s curses in epistle 6 are
the ones that prove to be effective.
If the tragic nature of Medea and Jason’s story seems to lighten in Ovid’s
presentation of changing love partners and serial infidelity, this is not irrelevant
to the elegiac genre in which these stories are presented, nested as they are in
flashbacks and allusions to what is yet to come. And yet relief from this tragic
burden seems appropriate to the dynamic Romanization of these female char-
acters, who come from Greek myths, but now behave in a way that is familiar
to the Romans of the Ovidian era, as if they themselves were now participat-
ing in the “Liaisons dangereuses” of Roman society at the turn of the first
century AD.
Notes
I wish to express my deep gratitude to Prof. Susan Shapiro for her most helpful observations,
keen suggestions, and invaluable advice on both the structure and the content of this article.
I am not exaggerating when saying that without her generous support this publication could
not have been realized. I also owe many thanks to the anonymous readers of Mediterranean
Studies for their observations. I finally thank my friends Prof. Helen Gasti and Prof. Andreas
Michalopoulos, who read this article at a preliminary stage, as well as Mrs. Alexandra Douma
for her help. I am naturally responsible for all remaining faults and possible deficiencies.
1. Ars Amatoria 3.345. See also Henri Bornecque and Marcel Provost, Ovide. Héroïdes
(Paris, 1928), v on the addition of the genitive Heroidum to the title.
2. See Stephen Harrison, “Ovid and Genre: Evolution of an Elegist,” 82, and Richard Tar-
rant, “Ovid and Ancient Literary History,” 13–14, both in Ovid. The Cambridge Companion, ed.
Philip Hardie (Cambridge, 2002), for a short chronological catalogue of the Ovidian poems.
3. In elegiac couplets, a hexameter (or six-measure) line is followed by a pentameter (or five-
measure) line.
4. See, for example, Harrison, “Ovid and Genre,” 82–83; Alain Michel, “L’élégie romaine:
rhétorique et poétique,” in Ovid Werk und Wirkung. Festgabe für Michael von Albrecht zum 65.
Geburtstag, Teil I, Herausgegeben von Werner Schubert (Frankfurt, 1999), 28; cf. W. S. Anderson,
“The Heroides,” in Ovid, ed. J. W. Binns (London, 1973), 49–83; also see Alain Deremetz, “Visages
des genres dans l’élégie ovidienne: Amores 1.1 et 3,1,” in Élégie et épopée dans la poésie ovidienne
(Héroïdes et Amours) en hommage à Simone Viarre, 15 et 16 mai 1998, ed. Jacqueline Fabre-Serris
and Alain Deremetz (Villeneuve d’Ascq, 1999), 76, who notes that epic and tragedy remain
incorporated in the elegiac corpus, as for example, in Propertius 4.1, 4.4, Tibullus 2.5, Ovid,
Ars Amatoria 1.101–32; another example is Io’s “epyllion” in Heroides 14.
5. Cf. Barbara Weiden Boyd, Ovid’s Literary Loves. Influence and Innovation in the Amores
(Ann Arbor, 1997), 2–3; also Francisca Moya del Baño, Ovidio. Heroidas. Texto revisado y tracucido
(Madrid, 1986), xi–xii.
6. Cf. Tadeusz Zielinski, “Topica e tipologia nelle «Eroidi» ovidiane,” in Pagine critiche di
letteratura latina, scelte e ordinate da A. Ronconi e F. Bormann, Seconda edizione accresciuta
(Florence, 1966), 324–25; Denise et Pierre Cogny, “Ovide et le «discours amoureux»,” in Colloque
Présence d’Ovide, édité par R. Chevallier (Paris, 1982), 375–76; H. Bardon, “Ovide et le baroque,”
in Ovidiana–Recherches sur Ovide, Publiées à l’occasion du bimillénaire de la naissance du poète
par N. I. Herescu (Paris, 1958), 80.
7. Cf. Victor Pöschl, “Esperienze d’amore nel libro delle Eroidi,” in Ovidio. Poeta della
memoria, Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Sulmona, 19–21 ottobre 1989, a cura di
Giuseppe Papponetti (Comitato Celebrazioni Ovidiane, Roma, 1991), 18.
8. Cf. Valahfridus (Wilfried Stroh), “Heroides Ovidianae cur epistulas scribant,” in Ovidio.
Poeta della memoria, Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Sulmona, 19–21 ottobre 1989, a cura
di Giuseppe Papponetti (Comitato Celebrazioni Ovidiane, Roma, 1991), 201–44.
9. Cf. Antonio De Caro, Si qua fides. Gli Amores di Ovidio e la persuasione elegiaca, (Palermo,
2003), 72.
10. Today Epistula Sapphus is generally accepted as an Ovidian work; see, for example, Gian
Biagio Conte, Latin Literature. A History, trans. Joseph Sodolow, revised by Don Fowler and
Glenn W. Most (Baltimore, 1994), 346–47.
11. Paul Allen Miller, Latin Erotic Elegy. An Anthology and Reader (London, 2002), 30.
12. Uta Fischer, Ignotum hoc aliis ille novavit opus. Beobachtungen zur Darstellungskunst Ovids
in den Heroides unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Briefpaare Her. 16 und 17 (Paris und Helena)
und Her. 20 und 21 (Acontius und Cydippe) (Berlin, 1969), 22.
13. Cf. H. J. Rose, A Handbook of Latin Literature. From the Earliest Times to the Death of St.
Augustine, reprinted with a new bibliography by E. Courtney (Wauconda, IL, 1996), 328–29;
Pierre Grimal, Le lyrisme à Rome (Vendôme, 1978), 136; Elaine Fantham, Roman Literary Culture.
From Cicero to Apuleius (Baltimore, 1999), 112; Alessandro Schiesaro, “Ovid and the Professional
Discourses of Scholarship, Religion, Rhetoric,” in Hardie, Ovid, 71; Katharina Volk, Ovid
(Malden, MA, 2010), 68; see also De Caro, Si qua fides, 78.
14. Cf. Sharon L. James, Learned Girls and Male Persuasion. Gender and Reading in Roman
Love Elegy (Berkeley, 2003), 21. For more on Ovid’s impersonation of the feminine viewpoint,
see below.
15. On Ovid’s exploration of feminine psychology in this collection, and on his indebtedness
to Euripides, see Conte, Latin Literature, 350.
16. Cf. Volk, Ovid, 83.
17. Howard Jacobson, Ovid’s Heroides (Princeton, NJ, 1974).
18. Friedrich Spoth, Ovids Heroides als Elegien (Munich, 1992).
19. See, for example, Florence Verducci, Ovid’s Toyshop of the Heart. Epistulae Heroidum
(Princeton, NJ, 1985); Efrossini Spentzou, Ovid’s Heroides: Transgressions of Genre and Gender
(Oxford, 2003); Gianpiero Rosati, Ovidio, Lettere di Eroine. Introduzione, traduzione e note.
Testo latino a fronte (Milan, 1989); Alessandro Barchiesi, Speaking Volumes. Narrative and
Intertext in Ovid and Other Latin Poets, ed. and trans. Matt Fox and Simone Marchesi (London,
2001); Alessandro Barchiesi, P. Ovidi Nasonis Epistulae Heroidum 1–3 (Florence, 1992); Jean-
Cristophe Jolivet, Allusion et fiction épistolaire dans les Héroïdes. Recherches sur l’intertextualité
ovidienne (École Française de Rome [Collection de l’ École Française de Rome 289], 2001);
Laurel Fulkerson, The Ovidian Heroine as Author: Reading, Writing, and Community in the
Heroides (Cambridge, 2005).
20. This term originally referred to those Greek poets in the Hellenistic period who adopted
a new style of poetry, rejecting classical epic poetry (mainly Homer), composing short, subtle
poems, and turning to personal themes instead of treating heroic deeds. Callimachus and
Theocritus are the most famous among them; their impact is obvious upon the Latin “neoteroi,”
writing in the first century BC: Catullus, Helvius Cinna, P. Valerius Cato, M. Furius Bibaculus,
Q. Cornificius. Their work, characterized by cunning allusions, influenced Vergil and the Latin
elegiac poets.
21. Jolivet, Allusion et fiction, 215.
22. Cf. Philip Hardie, “Ovid and Early Imperial Literature,” in Hardie, Ovid, 44.
23. Alison Sharrock, “Gender and Sexuality,” in Hardie, Ovid, 99 and 95.
24. Patricia A. Rosenmeyer, Ancient Epistolary Fictions. The Letter in Greek Literature
(Cambridge, 2001), 346.
25. Bornecque and Provost, Ovide, ix–x.
26. Cf. Fritz Graf, “Myth in Ovid,” in Hardie, Ovid, 112.
27. Cf. Jacobson, Ovid’s Heroides, 342, who also points out how the Heroides differ from tragic
monologues.
28. Cf. Sergio Casali, “Ovidio e la preconoscenza della critica–Qualche generalizzazione a
partire da Heroides 14,” Philologus 142, no. 1 (1998): 94–113.
29. Indeed, scholars had for many years considered these traits to be faults, as stated above.
30. Schiesaro, “Ovid and the Professional Discourses,” 72.
31. Cf. Rosati, Ovidio, 8–9.
32. Cf. Heroides 5, 16, 17, 19.177–78, 20.49, regarding the way Oenone, Paris, Helen, Hero,
and Acontius see Helen’s affair with Paris.
33. Cf. Rosati, Ovidio, 8.
34. Cf. Marina Scordilis Brownlee, Ovid’s Heroides and the Novela Sentimental (Princeton,
NJ, 1990), 31.
35. Cf. Barchiesi, Speaking Volumes, 33.
36. Cf. A. N. Michalopoulos, “Fighting Against a Witch: The Importance of Magic in
Hypsipyle’s Letter to Jason (Ov., Her. 6),” MHNH 4 (2004): 97; also see D. O. Ross, Backgrounds
to Augustan Poetry. Gallus, Elegy and Rome (Cambridge, 1975), 78.
37. Heroides 12, lines 1–2; for the text of the Heroides, I am using G. P. Goold’s edition.
38. My translations of Ovid are based largely on those of Showerman (revised by Goold),
although I have made some minor changes.
39. Cf. F. Bessone, P. Ovidii Nasonis. Heroidum Epistula XII Medea Iasoni (Florence, 1997), 61.
40. Cf. ibid., 64–65.
41. An internal narrator has informed Hypsipyle about his adventures and return to Thessaly.
See Heroides 6.23ff.
42. Michalopoulos, “Fighting Against a Witch,” 97; Jacobson, Ovid’s Heroides, 107; Verducci,
Ovid’s Toyshop, 61.
43. Cf. Irini Mitousi, “De genere: Sex and Genre in Ovid’s Heroides” (PhD thesis, Thessaloniki,
2007), 304–5, who points out the intensely magical erotic dimension of Jason's persuasion of
Medea, found also in Pindar’s version: Venus, after a magical ceremony, teaches Jason the art of
persuasion (Πείθω is Aphrodite’s daughter after all). In Euripides’s Medea the persuasion proce-
dure contains elements of magic at a metaphorical level; see Euripides’s Medea, lines 579–87; and
cf. Apollonius 3.457–58. At the same time persuasion constitutes a typical feature of the fallax
elegiac puella and the male protagonists of Ovid’s Heroides.
44. Michalopoulos, “Fighting Against a Witch,” 98; also see A. M. Tupet, La magie dans la
poésie latine I: Des origines à la fin du règne d’Auguste (Paris, 1976), 57; Oxford Latin Dictionary
(Oxford, 1968), 2027, s.v. veneficus.
45. See, for example, Ovid, Medicamina faciei, 35–42 (Goold), in which Ovid advises women
to look after their beauty without practicing magic; see Michalopoulos, “Fighting Against a
Witch,” 101n40; Tupet, La magie, 386; and Theodore D. Papanghelis, Propertius: A Hellenistic
Poet on Love and Death (Cambridge, 1987), 28, pointing out the absence of references to the
amatory use of magic by Medea.
46. See Pindar, Pythian 4.216–19 (Maehler) and Hyginus, Fabulae 22 (Rose): “itaque cum
sciret Iasonem sine Medeae consilio imperata perficere non posse, petit a Venere ut Medeae
amorem iniceret. Iason a Medea Veneris impulsu amatus est” (so, when she [Juno] knew that
Jason could not execute the tasks ordered to him without Medea’s advice, she asked Venus to put
love into Medea. Jason was loved by Medea thanks to the impulse of Venus).
47. Michalopoulos, “Fighting Against a Witch,” 101, and 101n46.
48. Hypsipyle, by choosing to blame Medea for using magic, seems to equate Medea with
another female sorceress met in the Amores, the procuress Dipsas. See Amores 1.8.5–18 and
especially 5 (Goold): “illa magas artes Aeaeaque carmina novit” (She knows the ways of magic,
and Aeaean incantations; trans. Showerman), where the art of magic is openly connected with
Medea; see also Metamorphoses 7.197–219, Tibullus 1.2.45–56. See Michalopoulos, “Fighting
Against a Witch,” 107, for comments on specific magical abilities of Medea.
49. Cf. Jolivet, Allusion et fiction, 279–80.
50. The same term is used by other female letter writers in the same collection, in most cases
when they wish to show disdain for a rival; see Heroides 5.60, 9.121, 132, 14.95, 108, 19.102; cf.
Amores 1.14.39, Ars Amatoria 1.320, 321, 365, 2.377, 3.677, Propertius 3.22.35. See Oxford Latin
Dictionary, 1281, s.v. paelex, (derived from the Greek παλλακίς, pallakis, a concubine or pros-
titute); see Gellius 4.3.3, who also points out a paelex’s inferior status. The use of the word
contributes to adopting a mundane and even lower-class tone in topics previously treated by
the “higher” genres of tragedy and epic; after all, schetliastic expressions against one’s rivals is a
usual elegiac topos. See John Boswell, Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe (New York, 1995;
Greek translation: Athens, 2004), 60; J. C. McKeown, Ovid: Amores. Text, Prolegomena and
Commentary in Four Volumes. Volume II. A Commentary on Book One (ARCA, Classical and
Medieval Texts, Papers and Monographs 22; Leeds, 1989), 380; Peter Knox, Ovid. Heroides. Select
Epistles (Cambridge, 1995), 154, 187.
51. Michalopoulos, “Fighting Against a Witch,” 98.
52. Cf. Michalopoulos, “Fighting Against a Witch,” 99, who notes only that Medea does not
seem to know anything about Hypsipyle and Jason’s residence in Lemnos.
53. The ’Eρινύες, Erinyes (or Furiae, Furies, usually mentioned in the plural) are hideous
female demons who avenge the murders of family members; see Edward Tripp, The Meridian
Handbook of Classical Mythology (New York, 1974), s.v. Erinyes.
54. Cf. Michalopoulos, “Fighting Against a Witch,” 100.
55. On the possible meaning of Erinys’s mention in Apollonius 3.776, see R. L. Hunter,
Apollonius of Rhodes Argonautica, book 3 (Cambridge, 1989), 181.
56. Cf. Michalopoulos, “Fighting Against a Witch,” 100n39.

57. See Heroides 6.90: “certaque de tepidis colligit ossa rogis” (and she collects particular bones
from the still warm funeral pyres). The details “certa ossa” and “tepidis rogis” are to be noted.
58. Cf. Bessone, P. Ovidii Nasonis, 21.
59. Cf. A. G. Nikolaidis, “The Figure of Medea in the Works of Ovid,” in Literature and
Politics in the Age of Augustus, 1st Greek Colloquium of Latin Studies, Ioannina, 5–6 November
1982 (Ioannina, 1984, in Modern Greek, English summary), 116, and 116n66. See also the trans-
formation of Apollonius’s Medea’s dilemma (3.654–55) from a virtue rather than love-obsession
trait into the Ovidian Phaedra’s dilemma in Heroides 4.7; see Peter Knox, “The Heroides: Elegiac
Voices,” in Brill’s Companion to Ovid, ed. B. W. Boyd (Leiden–Boston–Köln, 2002), 132 and
132n55. It looks as if Ovid preferred to imitate Apollonius’s Medea in Phaedra’s epistle, where
the experienced and erotically unscrupulous heroine pretended to be the innocent and inex-
perienced Medea that we know from Apollonius, before practically becoming a “Medea” for
Hippolytus, her “son.”
60. Equally ironic is Hypermestra’s persistent reference to herself as a virgo (virgin) and soror
(sister) in Heroides 14.55, 17, 123. Michael Lipka, Language in Vergil’s Eclogues (Berlin, 2001),
161–62, presents a detailed discussion of the use of the term “virgo” and its character in compari-
son with puella (girl). Exaggeration or repetition sometimes produces comic effects.
61. Cf. 120, Amores 1.3.13–14 nuda simplicitas; see McKeown, Ovid: Amores, 69.
62. Mitousi, “De genere,” 289.
63. Cf. Bessone, P. Ovidii Nasonis, 12–13.
64. Cf. ibid., 21.
65. Brownlee, Ovid’s Heroides, 32.
66. Apollonius 3.1146–49.
67. See Nikolaidis, “Figure of Medea,” 105–11, 120, for a detailed presentation of the similari-
ties and differences among the twelfth epistle’s, Apollonius’s, and Euripides’s Medea. See also E.
J. Kenney, “Ovid’s Language and Style,” in Boyd, Brill’s Companion to Ovid, 80–81, for the scene
with the taming of the bulls in Metamorphoses 7.110–22.
68. Heroides 12.113 germane. So Medea is, in this point, equated with Catullan Ariadne, who
treats the Minotaur as a germanus in 64.150, although he was a half-brother of hers. See D. F. S.
Thomson, Catullus, edited with a textual and Interpretative Commentary (Toronto, 1998),
413; cf. Leonidas Tromaras, Catulli Carmina: Introduction, Text, Translation, Commentary
(Thessaloniki, 2001, in Modern Greek), 482; Mitousi, “De genere,” 291.
69. See Hunter, Apollonius of Rhodes Argonautica, 125, on Absyrtus’s genealogy.
70. See also Mitousi, “De genere,” 288, pointing out the neoteric and urbane characteristics the
heroine acquires in Ovid’s version.
71. Medea < medeor (to heal or cure). See Michalopoulos, “Fighting Against a Witch,”
99–100; cf. Lipka, Language in Vergil’s Eclogues, 106, on the dimension of medicina as cure for
love torments.
72. See, for example, praemedicatus (protected by medicines, Heroides 12.15); 97 medicamina
(drugs, medications, Heroides 12.97); medicato somno (medicated sleep, Heroides 12.107); medica-
tibus doctis (learned drugs, Heroides 12.165).
73. See, for example, φαρμάκοις (drugs or poisons, Medea 385); φάρμακα (drugs/poisons,
Medea 718); φαρμάκοις (drugs/poisons, Medea 789 and 806); and φαρμάκων (drugs/poisons,
Medea 1126 and 1201).
74. See, for example, 3.27 πολυφάρμακον (greatly knowledgeable in drugs/poisons, Apollonius
3.27); 478 φαρμάσσειν (using drugs/poisons, Apollonius 3.478); 530 φάρμαχ’ (drug/poisons,
Apollonius 3.530); φάρμακον (drug/poison, Apollonius 3.845); and 4.1677 πολυφαρμάκου
(greatly knowledgeable in drugs/poisons, Apollonius 4.1677).
75. A similar process occurs in the letters of the emblematic weavers Penelope, Hero, and
Hypermestra; see, for example, Vaios Vaiopoulos, “Hypermestra as Seen by Ovid in Epist.
14,” Eikasmos 20 (2009): 216; Gianpiero Rosati, “Form in Motion. Weaving the Text in the
Metamorphoses,” in Ovidian Transformations. Essays on the Metamorphoses and Its Reception, ed.
P. R. Hardie, A. Barchiesi, and S. Hinds (Cambridge, 1999), 241–53.
76. This word means both “poem” and “magic charm” in Latin.
77. See also Hunter, Apollonius of Rhodes Argonautica, 230.
78. See also Barchiesi, Speaking Volumes, 33, Michalopoulos, “Fighting Against a Witch,”
110–11.
79. See Michalopoulos, “Fighting Against a Witch,” 112.
80. Euripides, Medea 17–18.
81. Ibid., 271–76, 934.
82. Ibid., 792–94, 1136–41, 1273–78.
83. Ibid., 1123–24.
84. Ibid., 1321–22.
85. Similarly, Hero’s letter (Heroides 19) supposedly brings Leander’s adventure forward.
86. Cf. Tromaras, Catulli Carmina, 485.
87. Cf. Vergil’s Aeneid 4.651–71, esp. 659–62: “‘Moriemur inultae, / sed moriamur’ ait, ‘sic
iuvat ire sub umbras. / hauriat hunc oculis ignem crudelis ab alto / Dardanus et nostrae secum
ferat omina mortis’” (“I will die unavenged, but let me die,” she said. “Let me go this way to the
dark. May the cruel Trojan discern this flame from the open sea and may the omens of my death
follow him”]. The “royal” Dido’s complaint is that she will die unavenged, and only one line
constitutes a kind of curse. In her address to Aeneas, a few moments before her noble death, she
appears much more decent and moderate than the Catullan Ariadne and the Ovidian Hypsipyle.
88. See, for example, Homer’s Iliad 19.260.
89. I owe the remark that Ovid might be referring back to the Catullan passage in Hypsipyle’s
curses to Prof. Susan Shapiro. Once again I would like to thank her for her insightful suggestion.
90. See Pseudo-Apollodorus 1.9.17, 3.6.4, Hyginus, Fabulae 15, 74, 254; see also Michalopoulos,
“Fighting Against a Witch,” 113; Pierre Grimal, Dictionnaire de la mythologie grecque et romaine
(Paris, 1951, Greek translation: Thessaloniki, 1987), 674–75 for Hypsipyle’s generation and
ancestors.
91. Cf. Michalopoulos, “Fighting Against a Witch,” 113.
92. Ibid., 113.

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Vaiopoulus. Between Lament and Irony. Some Cross-References in Ovid's Heroides 6 and 12

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Between Lament and Irony: Some Cross-references in Ovid's Heroides 6 and 12

Author(s): Vaios Vaiopoulos

Mediterranean Studies, Vol. 21, No. 2, 2013

literary origin the innate characteristics of amorous infidelity and indifference, as

Scholarship on the Heroides

which the writer impersonates a famous historical figure or literary character)13

Irony within Lament

the reader is assumed to possess an overall understanding of the myth; in fact,

1. The Beginning of Medea’s Letter (Heroides 12.1–2)

At tibi Colchorum, memini, regina vacavi,

The beginning of Medea’s letter is extremely abrupt, summarizing the entire

gratulor incolumi, quantum sinis; hoc tamen ipsum

I rejoice for your safety, as far as you allow me; nevertheless

quamlibet adverso signatur epistula vento.

But a letter is sealed [i.e., it can be sent] even in adverse winds.

The complaint made by both women has to do with Jason’s “unavailability.”

barbara narratur venisse venefica tecum,

abstulerant oculi lumina nostra tui. (Heroides 12.36)43

The impression that there is an imaginary conversation between Medea and

. . . male quaeritur herbis

. . . love is wrongly sought by herbs

In these lines, Hypsipyle interlaces the epic ideal of καλοκαγαθία (kalokagathia,

2. Jason’s Ingratia (Ingratitude)

urbe virum iuvi, tectoque animoque recepi. (Heroides 6.55)

adde preces castas inmixtaque vota timori—

Add chaste prayers and vows mixed with fear,

Medea, on the other side, will openly accuse Jason of ingratitude:

Est aliqua ingrato meritum exprobrare voluptas. (Heroides 12.21)

numen ubi est? ubi di? meritas subeamus in alto,

Ut culpent alii, tibi me laudare necesse est,

Others may blame me, but you must praise me,

quod vivis, quod habes nuptam socerumque potentis,

quodsi forte virum non dedignare Pelasgum—

If there is a chance that you don’t disdain a Pelasgian husband—

. . . nocuit mihi barbara paelex! (Heroides 6.81)

paelicis ipsa meos inplessem sanguine vultus. (Heroides 6.149)

quos ego servavi, paelex amplectitur artus. (Heroides 12.173)

Medea’s seemingly coincidental use of the same derogatory term (paelex)50 in

at mihi nec Iuno, nec Hymen, sed tristis Erinys

And yet neither Juno nor Hymen, but wretched Erinys,

3. Two Carmina Composers

Medea, in epistle 12, although she is ironically self-undermining, presents

tunc ego te vidi, tunc coepi scire, quid esses;

Haec animum—et quota pars haec sunt!—movere puellae

Words like these—and how much of it is here—moved the heart of the

ipsa ego, quae dederam medicamina, pallida sedi,

I, who had given you the charms, sat pallid there,

Medea’s reference to herself as a puella simplex (simple girl, 12.89–90),61 although

at non te fugiens sine me, germane, reliqui!

But, my brother, I did not abandon you, as I fled!

Quid referam Peliae natas pietate nocentes

Why should I speak of the daughters of Pelias, harming him through

On the murder of her brother, Absyrtus, referenced in Medea’s epistle (12.113–16),

quaeque feros pepuli doctis medicatibus ignes. (Heroides 12.165)

I, who could beat back fierce fires with learned drugs.

result of her ability to combine specific ingredients—words and episodes, arguments

Lemniades viros, nimium quoque, vincere norunt.

(rather than a queen) deceived by a perfidus hospes (deceitful stranger/guest).

Iuppiter ex alto periuria ridet amantum,

Jupiter from above smiles at the perjuries of lovers,

complementarity of both letters through the enhancement of an imaginary

56. Cf. Michalopoulos, “Fighting Against a Witch,” 100n39.

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Why should I speak of the daughters of Pelias, harming him through