Ovid: Heroides II Commentary

The Heroides, a collection of elegiac poems written as letters, fused Ovid's interests in erotics and myth into a new and unique genre, in which experiments with epistolary form and the psychology of first-person narrative would go on to have a profound influence on European literature. This two-volume edition of 1898 remains an essential resource for the poems; but it has long been difficult to obtain. It contains what is still the only detailed commentary in English on the whole collection, as well as extensive discussion of the text and its transmission. It also offers the full text of the translation of Heroides into Greek prose by the Byzantine scholar Maximus Planudes.

Arthur Palmer was Professor of Latin in the University of Dublin and Fellow of Trinity College. The edition was completed after his death by his colleague, L.C. Purser. Duncan Kennedy is Reader in Latin Literature and the Theory of Criticism at the University of Bristol.