Abstrakt
This paper is about a series of epistles known as the double Heroides, whose authorship has been disputed by a number of critics. The paper revisits the issue by analyzing the criteria proposed for and against Ovidian authorship as well as a number of parallel passages in the Heroides and Ovid's exilic works.
The modern criteria are mostly subjective and depend on different readerly perspectives on Ovid, i.e. the way we tend to construct Ovid's authorial persona. Ovid construct his own persona in number of metapoetic statements (like no other canonical Latin author) as that of a rebel, defying authority and established types throughout his career.
The conclusion is that the double Heroides are Ovid's own work, which he wrote in exile as an Appendix to his own earlier letters and in defiance of Augustus' authority.