How Ovid's Heroides Used Virgil's Aeneid

Virgil's Version of Dido and Aeneas Influential in Ovid's Early Poem

Aug 14, 2009

Ovid wanted to retell part of Virgil's Aeneid in his own way. But his Heroides doesn't change the Dido and Aeneas story, one of many tales in Ovid's early poem.

With the appearance of his Aeneid in 19 BC, Publius Vergilius Maro, known in English as Virgil, became the greatest poet of classical Rome. Virgil's epic told the story of the Trojan prince Aeneas who, through long journeys and battles, went on to found the Roman race.

Since the Aeneid became the definitive version of the Aeneas myth, the epic poets who came after Virgil couldn't retell the story without taking a profoundly different approach than Virgil. This is clear in the early work of Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso), Virgil's most brilliant successor, who wrote a generation later.

One of Ovid's early poems is the Heroides, a fictional collection of letters written by famous figures from Greco-Roman mythology. Most of the letters are by women, writing complaints to their husbands or lovers. This wittily subversive attitude toward love affairs would become characteristic of Ovid's work.

For instance, Odysseus' wife, Penelope, writes the first letter of the Heroides. She famously writes to her long-gone husband, "don't send a letter" in reply; "send yourself." Over a dozen pairs of quarreling lovers of generally lesser distinction fill out the Heroides, though there are other exceptions. The Iliad's Paris and Helen, get fuller treatment, a letter each (16 and 17, respectively).

In the Heroides' seventh letter, that of Dido to Aeneas, Ovid tackles Virgil's version of the Aeneas myth. But the presence of Dido, the tragic queen of Carthage, among so many other women scorned means that in this early instance, Ovid has yet to challenge Virgil for poetic supremacy head-on.

Ovid’s treatment of Dido depends heavily upon Virgil’s account. The entire letter, “written” in the short space between Aeneas’ departure from Carthage and Dido’s suicide, is in keeping with the events Virgil describes in the first four books of the Aeneid. Lines 81-96 of Heroides 7, in particular, read like a Virgilian summary.

Not only does Dido describe the death of Aeneas’ wife Creusa at Troy in accordance with book 2 of the Aeneid, she confirms that Aeneas was the source of her knowledge, as he had been in Virgil. Ironically, “you had told these things to me” (haec mihi narraras, 7.85) could just as easily have been spoken by Ovid himself, addressing Virgil, even as he puts those words in the mouth of Dido addressing Aeneas.

Ovid's Reworking of Virgil in the Heroides Set the Stage for the Metamorphoses

Ovid's approach to the Aeneid in the Heroides shows that he is anxious to put his own spin on the Dido and Aeneas story made famous by Virgil. But since his version sticks close to the Aeneid, and is only a small part of the Heroides, it is clear that Ovid wasn't ready to challenge Virgil directly in his early work.

It is only when Ovid went on to write his own epic masterpiece, the Metamorphoses, that his treatment of Virgilian material would be bolder than it had been in his Heroides.

The copyright of the article How Ovid's Heroides Used Virgil's Aeneid in World Poetry is owned by Luke Arnott. Permission to republish How Ovid's Heroides Used Virgil's Aeneid in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.