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THE HEROIDES
resultant action is entirely in her mind and heart. Relief is provided by brilliant
rhetoric and by narrative retrospects, which include some very lively writing
(e.g. Ariadne on her awakening, 10.7—50; Hypermnestra on her wedding night,
14.21—84), but it is on their merits as psychological drama that these poems
must stand or fall.
To exemplify Ovid's treatment of his material two epistles which invite
comparison with known originals may be briefly examined. Euripides had
handled the story of Phaedra and Hippolytus in two plays, the first of which,
now lost, had given offence by presenting Phaedra as totally shameless. It
appears to have been this lost play on which Ovid principally drew for his
Phaedra {Her. 4).' The implausibility (not to mention the anachronism, which
is common to all the epistles) of her writing to Hippolytus is simply brazened
out. Love-letters were part of the apparatus of contemporary intrigue (Ars
Am. 1.455—86, 3.469—98, 619—30), and Ovid's Phaedra is envisaged very much
as a contemporary elegiac figure. The hunting motif which in Euripides formed
part of her delirium (Hipp. 215—22) is transmuted by Ovid into the typical
ohsequium (devotion to the wishes of the beloved) of elegy (37— 50). 2 The logic
of her pleading is elegiac and declamatory: Theseus' treacherous abandonment
of her sister Ariadne (a cross-reference, as it were, to Her. 10) becomes the
basis of her appeal to Hippolytus to betray his father with herself. The grim
message of Euripides is trivialized and 'elegized' into a snippet of proverbial
wisdom: ... . . ,. .
quid luuat incinctae studia exercere Dianae
et Veneri numeros eripuisse suos?
quod caret alterna requie, durabile non est;
haec reparat uires fessaque membra nouat. (4.87-90)
How does it profit to cultivate the pursuits of the huntress Diana and rob l^enus of
her function? Nothing lasts if it is not allowed occasional rest; this is what restores
strength and refreshes the weary body.
Without Venus the countryside is — countrified (102); the thought is straight
from the world of the Amores and Ars amatoria. In the elegiac triangle Theseus
is cast for the role of deceived husband, and it is elegiac logic that he deserves
no better; he has his consolation in the arms of Pirithous (no—11). Equally
elegiac is Phaedra's defence of her 'new' morality (129—46). Here too rusticus
is used as a term of contempt for what is old and unfashionable; her remarks
on family honour take the reader straight into the Rome of Augustus (131—2).
In general in the Heroides Ovid can be seen reverting to a traditional pre-elegiac
view of love as a passion felt in its full intensity only by women; but his
1 In some places, however, he is clearly indebted to the extant Hippolytus. Whether these were
passages retained by Euripides from the earlier version or whether Ovid laid both plays under contribution
we cannot tell.
2 Cf. Prop. 1.1.9—16, Tib. 1.4.49—50, [Tib.] 4.3.it—18, Ov. Ars Am. 2.185—96.
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