Intratextual readings in Ovid’s Heroides

Starting from the so-called Sabinus-elegy, Ovid’s Amores 2.18, this paper focuses on intratextual connections between the single love-letters, the fifteen fictional epistles imagined as written by female heroines lamenting abandon from the men they loved, Heroides 1-15, and the double epistles, letters from male heroes paired with replies from loved women, Heroides 16-21. It also argues that Helen (Her. 17), a very intratextual character, exploits previous stories of afflictae puellae and acts as a praeceptrix amoris, pointing to contradictions of love elegy and failure of elegiac female lament in the single epistles.