‘Et multi, quae sit nostra Corinna, rogant.’
The Amores, in their original form, constituted Ovid’s earliest work, written in his youth. The extant poems are not all that he wrote on Corinna; Tr. iv. 10, 57,
‘Carmina cum primum populo iuvenilia legi,
barba resecta mihi bisve semelve fuit.
Moverat ingenium totam cantata per urbem
nomine non vero dicta Corinna mihi.
Multa quidem scripsi; sed quae vitiosa putavi,
emendaturis ignibus ipse dedi.’
The lament for Tibullus (iii. 9) must have been written in Ovid’s twenty-fourth year.
2. Heroides.—Some of these at least were written before the second edition of the Amores, for in Am. ii. 18, 21-6 nine of them are mentioned by name. The title Heroides is due to the grammarian Priscian; in the MSS. they are called Epistulae, and so Ovid himself refers to them, A.A. iii. 345,
‘Vel tibi composita cantetur epistula voce:
ignotum hoc aliis ille novavit opus.’
Of the twenty letters in our collection 1-14 are letters from heroines to their lovers; 15-20 are in pairs, e.g. Paris to Helen and Helen to Paris. The authenticity of these last six is doubted, partly because the title Heroides cannot apply to half of them, and also because of their inferiority in style. In the use of the epistolary form in love poetry Ovid had no predecessor, and he himself calls attention to the novelty (A.A. above). The style shows the influence of Ovid’s rhetorical training: the Epistles are suasoriae in verse, and of suasoriae we know that he was particularly fond (Sen. Contr. ii. 10, 12, ‘Declamabat Naso raro controversias et non nisi ethicas: libentius dicebat suasorias. Molesta illi erat omnis argumentatio.’). His matter he would naturally draw from Homer, the Cypria, Apollonius Rhodius, and the Greek tragedians.
3. Between the two editions of the Amores he wrote the lost tragedy Medea. It was later than Am. iii. 1, where he pictures the Muses of Elegy and Tragedy as contending for his homage, and he finally decides (ll. 67-8),
‘Exiguum vati concede, Tragoedia, tempus:
tu labor aeternus; quod petit illa breve est.’
On the other hand, it was earlier than Am. ii. 18, 13,