Ovid's Portrayal of Briseis in Heroides 3

Michael Kelly

doi:10.1017/S0066477400002343

Ovid's Portrayal of Briseis in Heroides 3

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 May 2015

Michael Kelly

Show author details

Michael Kelly*: Affiliation:
University of Queensland

Article contents

Extract
References

Get access

Rights & Permissions

Extract

The third letter of the Heroides has long been appreciated for the consummate skill with which Ovid takes the Briseis of Homer's Iliad, where she is virtually a nonentity, and presents her in a new guise. By his masterly transformation of the enslaved girl into a lonely and desperate elegiac puella who is lost and bewildered in an epic world, he skilfully exploits the literary gulf between the two genres to produce a subtle masterpiece which can arouse only compassion for his heroine. There is, however, much more to appreciate in this letter than its poetic artistry.

Type: Research Article
Information: Antichthon , Volume 33 , November 1999 , pp. 77 - 80

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0066477400002343 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

¹ Barchiesi, A. (‘Problemi d'interpretazione in Ovidio’, MD 19 [1987] 74–6Google Scholar) makes two interesting observations on this transformation: Briséis' situation offered Ovid the opportunity to reverse a poetic convention under which it was usually a free-bom gentleman of good family who endured servitium anions for a female domestic (he notes that at Horace, Carm. 2.4.3Google Scholar, the ability of serva Briseis to move Achilles is offered as a solace to one in this predicament); Ovid uses the term dominus in this poem not only as the master of a slave but also as the reverse of the elegiac domina.

² Mack, S., Ovid (Yale 1988) 73Google Scholar.

³ Allodi, F.A., ‘Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder’, The Psychiatric Clinics of North America 17.2 (1994) 284–6Google Scholar PubMed, and Herman, J.L., Trauma and Recovery (London 1994)Google Scholar.

⁴ Hearst, P.C., Every Secret Thing (London 1982)Google Scholar.

⁵ Hearst (n.4) 199.

⁶ Jacobson, H., Ovid's Heroides (Princeton 1974) 37Google Scholar.

⁷ Allodi (n.3) 285. He explains that the name was derived from an episode in Sweden during which a young female hostage was emotionally drawn to her captor. In Patty Hearst's case, he considers that her change of heart towards her abductors was doubtless ‘a life-saving defense’.

⁸ Herman (n.3) 81 and 92.

⁹ Palmer, A., P. Ovidi Nasonis Heroides with the Greek Translation of Planudes (Oxford 1898) ad locGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ Verducci, F., Ovid's Toyshop of the Heart (Princeton 1985) 106–7Google Scholar.

¹¹ Spoth, F., Ovids Heroides als Elegien (Munich 1992) 74Google Scholar.

¹² Herman (n.3) 75 and 82.

¹³ I take line 107 as but one of several references that Briséis makes to her ‘marriage’ with Achilles. Wilkinson, L.P. (Ovid Recalled [Cambridge 1955] 90Google Scholar) is surely right in thinking that Ovid is working from II. 9.336, Achilles' special pleading that while Agamemnon has not touched the prizes of other Achaean chieftains, from himself alone (Wilkinson's interpretation here differs from those of many scholars because the punctuation of the Homeric line is disputed: some editors put a full stop after ’, thus making the Agamemnon's wife, Clytemnestra). In addition to allusions elsewhere in her letter, Briséis refers directly to her ‘marriage’ in lines 5, 6 and 52 (Achilles is her vir), in line 38 (sed non opus est tibi coniuge), in line 69 (she is a nupta), and in line 99 (nec me pro coniuge gessi). But Briseis is only too well aware that her ‘marriage’ is so informal that she can place no reliance on its legitimacy and so insecure that she must use argument and appeal to bolster the frailty of her claims. These claims wilt as her arguments and spirits falter; early in the letter Briséis writes to Achilles as her vir and her dominus combined (lines 5 and 6), but by its half-way point she can no longer sustain the combination (line 69: victorem captiva sequar, non nupta maritum), and she closes as an arnica and finally as a slave (lines 150 and 154).