Enrico SIMONETTI (Università Pegaso)
LACRIMAE SUA VERBA SEQUUNTUR: PATHOS ELEGIACO E RETICENZA EMOTIVA NELL’EROIDE DI IPERMESTRA
Keywords: Hypermestra, Heroides, feelings, Ovid.
Abstract: Lacrimae sua verba sequuntur: elegiac pathos and emotional reticence in the Herois of Hypermestra. To bridge the physical and psychological distance that separates the women from their men, in Ovid’s Heroides the lamenting girls display a wide range of emotions, expressed with marked rhetorical emphasis. While Penelope and Laodamia hope for the return of their husbands from the Trojan war, Oenone, Hypsipyle, Deianira, and Medea, betrayed by their partners, are tormented by jealousy; not much better fate awaits Phyllis, Dido, and Ariadne, abandoned by the men they had saved and welcomed; finally, Briseis and Hermione lament the laziness of Achilles and Orestes, slow to rescue them from their detestable captivity. However, it seems that this emotional movement is somewhat censored in the letter of Hypermestra to Lynceus, whose cold and formal tone has often been highlighted by scholars: forced, like Canace, to endure the cruelties of a merciless father, the innocent Danaid, on the one hand, omits any reference to the passion of love, while on the other hand, insists on the pietas shown toward the sanctity of marriage. My paper, therefore, aims to compare Hypermestra’s sensibility with the emotional attitude of the other heroines, in order to bring out the originality in Heroides XIV.