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OVID
Eager as she is for him to come, she urges caution in words which reflect her
conflicting feelings:
me miseram, cupio non persuadere quod hortor,
sisque precor monitis fortior ipse meis,
dummodo peruenias excussaque saepe per undas
inicias umeris bracchia lassa meis. (19.187—90)
Alas, I find myself wishing that my words shall not carry conviction and praying
that your valour will outrun the discretion which I urge —just so long as you come
safely across and throw about my neck those arms tired from long swimming.
With her account of an ominous dream (193—204) she returns to the long vigil
that began at 1. 33 and that has provided the setting for her soliloquy. Her
vision of the dying dolphin, which even she can scarcely misread (203), held
no mystery for Ovid's readers, 1 and her parting injunction reminds us again
of the deep and unselfish quality of her love:
si tibi non parcis, dilectae parce puellae,
quae numquam nisi te sospite sospes ero. (19.205—6)
If you will not spare yourself, spare the girl you love, for without you I shall not be
able to live.
In the double Heroides Ovid achieved a substantial technical advance. Viewing
relationships from opposite sides in this way undoubtedly added depth and
interest to the psychological portrayal. Yet the possibilities were still restricted
by both the form and the verse medium. Even in the double letters very little
in the way of real interaction occurs between the characters; the drama is still,
as it were, frozen, though at two points rather than one. Moreover, for largescale
poetry the elegiac couplet, though handled in virtuoso fashion, has serious
limitations. That these, in a particular genre, might be to some extent transcended,
is shown by the Fasti; but the peculiar turn of Ovid's genius for
exploring the vagaries of the human heart needed, for the full realization of its
capabilities, the broader canvas of the epic.
3. THE FASTI
At the end of the Amores Ovid had announced that a 'greater room' (area
motor') awaited him. In his apologia for his life and work he listed as his three
great voyages on the sea of poetry the lost tragedy Medea, the Fasti, and the
Metamorphoses (Trist. 2.547—56). The two latter poems complement each other
in more than one way. The obvious progenitors of the Fasti (Calendar) were
Callimachus and Propertius. In Ovid's early work, apart from Heroides 20—1
1
Cf. Anth. Pal. 7.215 (Anyte), 216 (Antipater of Thessalonica), 214 (Archias).
428
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