https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110611021-015 Giuseppe La Bua Intratextual Readings in Ovid’s Heroides In Amores 2.18, a programmatic poem addressed to the epic poet Macer 1 and com- posed for the three-book second edition, 2 Ovid reaffirms his commitment to love- elegy as a lifelong poetic occupation (in contrast to his sporadic pursuit of more serious genres, like tragedy and epic). 3 By rejecting martial epic and drama he stresses the elegiac nature of his poetry and establishes himself as a love-elegist. The poem is not only a formal literary recusatio, however. It also constitutes an authorial presentation of love-elegy as a genre encompassing various forms and patterns. The elegiac poem contains the first (by no means exhaustive) catalogue of the single love-letters, the Epistulae Heroidum, 4 the fifteen fictional epistles im- agined as written by female heroines lamenting their abandonment by and sepa- ration (and absence of any reply) from the men they loved (ll. 19–34): 5 Quod licet, aut artes teneri profitemur Amoris (ei mihi, praeceptis urgeor ipse meis), 20 aut quod Penelopes verbis reddatur Ulixi scribimus et lacrimas, Phylli relicta, tuas, quod Paris et Macareus et quod male gratus Iaso Hippolytique parens Hippolytusque legant, quodque tenens strictum Dido miserabilis ensem 25 dicat et † Aoniae Lesbis amata lyrae † Quam cito de toto rediit meus orbe Sabinus scriptaque diversis rettulit ipse locis! || 1 Macer is also the addressee of Ov. Pont. 2.10 and mentioned in Trist. 4.10.43–4. About the sup- posed identification of the Macer referred to in Tib. 2.6 with the poet addressed in Ovid’s elegy, see McKeown 1998, 382–3. 2 Hollis 1977, 150–1; McKeown 1998, 384–5. 3 For an exhaustive commentary of the elegy of the Amores, see McKeown 1998, 382–405. 4 The term epistula, used by Ovid himself in Ars 3.345 to designate an individual poem in the collection of the Heroides, was later applied to both the single and paired epistles; see Knox 2002, 117. See also Gibson 2003, 238–9 (for the interchangeability of cantare and legere and the origi- nality, novitas, of the Heroides). 5 Ovid mentions ten mythological characters (the writers and recipients of the single letters 1– 7, 10, 11, and 15): see Björk 2016, 21–2. || I would like to thank Stavros Frangoulidis and the organizers of the 11th Trends in Classics Inter- national Conference on ‘Intratextuality and Roman Literature’ for inviting me to participate as a speaker. Many thanks also to Laurel Fulkerson, Alison Sharrock, colleagues and friends attend- ing the conference for their thoughtful suggestions. Bereitgestellt von | De Gruyter / TCS Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 08.10.18 15:47