OVID'S HERMIONE: A KALEIDOSCOPIC HEROINE

Critics generally have not warmed to Heroides 8 (in which Hermione appeals to her husband, Orestes, to rescue her from Pyrrhus, who has claimed her as his promised bride, carried her off, and holds her prisoner). Jacobson opined that the poem is ‘not very successful’ and claimed that the lengthy argumentation is ‘rather boring, not to say sometimes silly and annoying’, while Palmer described it as ‘the feeblest and least poetical of all the Heroides’. However, scholars have largely neglected some typically Ovidian cleverness and complexity in kaleidoscopic play with character. Ovid's Hermione is Hermione, but she also takes on the guise of other mythological heroines, and she represents a complete inversion of an earlier depiction of Hermione. All of this gives the poem a distinct intellectual appeal to supplement the emotional impact, with witty touches to ensure that the epistle is not mawkish.