1. OVID’S HEROIDES-(HEROINES)
One of the least remarked and most remarkable qualities of Ovid’s writing is
the attention he paid to women.
Almost everything written in ancient times, from Homer to Saint Augustine,
was composed by men. Even on those occasions when men bothered to
write about women, the words come to us from a male point of view, full of
ignorance and prejudice.
There were women writing in their own personae in the Greco-Roman
cultural world. But, as far as we know, Ovid is the very first male writer to
write in a woman’s voice.
Nowadays, we take this kind of thing for granted, but in the Roman society
of his day it must have demanded an immense leap of the imagination. The
collection of poems known to us as the Heroides, “the women of the
heroes,” is just such a leap. Ovid recreated missives from eighteen heroic
women of his mythology along with correspondence from three of their
men. Some of the women are still, like Medea, Penelope of Ithaca, and
Dido of Carthage, quite well known. Others have faded into mythic
obscurity.
