An Ongoing Translation of Ovid's Heroides

The Heroides are among Ovid's earliest works. They are in the form of fictitious letters, most of them written by mythological women to the famous lovers who have abandoned them. They don't have the great emotional range or the often sharp political irony of the Metamorphoses, but they do have keen portraiture and a matchless rhetorical virtuosity. In addition, they offer us a quintessentially Ovidian slant on well-known mythological and legendary themes, by letting the familiar stories of male heroes be retold by the women who suffered their neglect.

This site includes Heroides I-XIV, as Volume I of a complete translation of the Heroides.  I have concentrated on the first fourteen poems partly out of considerations of time, but mostly because the first fourteen form a logical unit--they do not include any of the "paired" letters (Heroides XVI-XXI, in which a woman's letter and her lover's answer are grouped together), and the doubts about authenticity which have been raised about Heroides XV do not apply to them for the most part. 

These translations and the other materials that accompany them are intended for college undergraduates who do not read Latin and who may have limited knowledge of classical literature and mythology.  Consequently, the notes cover anything that I think might be unfamiliar to a freshman or sophomore in a general education class.  The introductions are intended to fill in the mythological background, and the commentaries are not really commentaries at all in the usual sense--instead, they are section-by-section summaries of the poems, and are intended to make first-reading comprehension a little easier for students who may find the form or content of the poems unfamiliar.

I have not attempted a verse translation. I have preserved the line-breaks as closely as possible--in part to allow ease of reference to the Latin text for those students who do have some Latin, and in part because Ovid structures his thought and syntax in line-pairs--but the text itself is essentially a prose translation.

The translations themselves have been an ongoing project--until recently, they were done in the spare moments which could be stolen from my other work. However, in the fall of 2004, Edgewood College granted me a sabbatical to continue work on them.  I have now completed all the translations in Volume I, along with their hypertext notes, introductions and commentaries.  I hope to add a general introduction, a links page, and some additional background materials, along with a navigational structure for the site, during free moments over the summer of 2005.   

All of the translations may be copied and redistributed freely for non-commercial purposes, but I would appreciate it if you would let me know about it if you choose to use them: hunter@edgewood.edu