The Heroides, or Letters of Heroines, is a collection of twenty-one fictional letters composed by the famous Augustan poet Ovid (43 BC-AD 17/18). It is a widely read work of elegiac poetry which is of special interest to students of gender literature. The poems, which take the form of fifteen letters from heroines to their absent lovers and three pairs of letters to a lover with a reply, have frequently been edited and translated into English in both prose and verse. This volume presents a radically new text and translation of the whole collection. The text separates what we regard as the original core of the poem from what we take to be additional accretions to it. The translation is designed to facilitate an understanding of the original as an aid to interpretation. All students of Latin poetry are included in the intended readership.
J. B. Hall taught Latin at Bedford College, University of London, subsequently at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London, and is now retired as Hildred Carlile Professor of Latin Emeritus. He has co-edited and translated the works of Statius in five volumes, and has produced an edition and separately a translation of John of Salisbury's Metalogicon.A. L. Ritchie received an MA with Distinction in classics from the University of London. She was a freelance copy-editor of learned journals and a translator of Latin texts, and co-edited the works of Statius in five volumes.M. J. Edwards is Professor of Classics and Honorary Research Fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London. He has published widely on the Attic Orators, Plutarch and the Latin philosophical works of Francis Bacon. He co-edited the works of Statius in five volumes.
