In this fine volume, T. considers the complete works of Ovid's ‘early poetry’ as an integrated corpus, which she believes to have been published in a revised, collected edition no earlier than a.d. 2. Refreshingly, T. demonstrates the important space occupied by the single Heroides alongside the traditional amatory corpus, and makes her most ‘radical contribution’ in exploring this unified corpus ‘through the kaleidoscope’ (p. 4) of the so-called Epistula Sapphus (Her. 15), which she persuasively demonstrates, whilst providing a balanced account of the historical arguments (Chapter 4),Footnote ¹ to be of Ovidian authorship and, in a sense, to epitomise Ovid's portrayal of himself as a poet.

Through a careful exposition of Am. 2.18 and of the transmission of the single and double Heroides in her first chapter, T. explores the vexed question of the chronology of Ovid's early works, and shows that it cannot clearly be established from external evidence. Instead she proposes that, in considering the hypothesised collected edition, the reader is compelled ‘to look at the artistic design, rather than the actual making in time’ of the works in question, and that this design is apparent in the fictional chronology which Ovid seems to establish within this corpus, and (rather less convincingly) in the ‘striking aesthetic symmetry’ of male and female protagonists and perspectives (p. 26). By considering the internal references in Ovid's early poetry to his own compositions, T. concludes that the Heroides were the poems with which he ‘redesigned’ his career to begin, following them with the Amores, the Medicamina, the Ars and the Remedia. The excellent discussions of the relationship of Her. 15 to the poet's amatory works in Chapters 6 (Amores) and 7 (Ars and Remedia), which clearly demonstrate how well integrated Sappho's letter to Phaon ought to be to our reading of Ovid's early poetry, is predicated on one's acceptance of this ‘redesigning’ of his early literary output, though it is unclear to me, especially in Chapter 6, why we should have to assume that the Heroides preceded the Amores, even in a fictional chronology. Given that a number of the Heroides are listed in Am. 2.18, we may suppose that this poem postdates their conception or composition (as it appears to postdate the composition of [at least part of] the Ars and the first and last poems of Amores 3), but that does not necessitate that all the Amores were necessarily composed after the Heroides. In relation to the words which Ovid gives to Corinna (or another puella) at Am. 2.18.8 (‘me miseram! iam te’ dixit ‘amare pudet?’), indeed, T. suggests that the puella’s complaint ‘anticipates the basic plot of each of the Heroides’ by referring to her putative abandonment (p. 30). This seems to run contrary to her overall argument.

It is also worth noting that Tr. 4.10.57–60 strongly implies that Ovid's earliest work was, in fact, his Amores (presumably in the first edition), and whilst we may think that he, now relegated, is once again ‘redesigning’ his literary output, there is no clear reason to doubt this autobiographical note. In any case, as T. suggests, the (fictional) chronology is, in a sense, unimportant, and what is far more intriguing is to consider the ways in which the constituent parts of Ovid's early corpus interact with one another: it may prove more fruitful from an exegetical perspective, to explore both how our understanding of the Heroides is influenced by our awareness of the Amores, and vice versa, rather than limiting our scope to one or the other. (In the light of this, we may also wish to reconsider the chronological relation of Propertius 4.3 to the epistles: it is at least possible that the former could have followed the latter, cf. P.E. Knox, Ovid: Heroides [1995], p. 18 n. 44, adding a further layer to Propertius' exploration of elegy's generic bounds in Book 4.)

In her second chapter, T. discusses the absence of an Ovidian authorial signature in the Heroides, noting that in most of his other works Ovid signs himself as Naso with an epithet which contributes towards the reader's understanding of the pose which he adopts in each work (e.g. Naso magister in the didactic Ars [2.744, 3.812]). She notes that almost all the heroines sign their epistles in a not dissimilar manner (e.g. Penelope coniunx or rapta Briseis), and suggests that Sappho, who styles herself auctor Sappho and Sappho poetria, ‘most closely resembles’ Ovid in this respect (p. 46). As T. demonstrates, the Lesbian poet occupies a unique place amongst the internal authors of the Heroides, in that, although a mythical past had grown up around her reputation as other poets and playwrights had written of her, she is also an historical figure whose poetry functions as one of the source-texts for her epistle. Sappho is thus portrayed, T. shows, as sharing poetological concerns similar to those expressed by Ovid in other works (e.g. with metrical form or the generic propriety of elegy); she apparently demonstrates familiarity with her own verse (pp. 49–66); and, along with Ovid, appears to claim joint authorship – scribimus, et lacrimis oculi rorantur obortis (15.97) – of the epistle, in language similar to that of the catalogue of the Heroides in Am. 2.18 (scribimus et lacrimas, Phylli relicta, tuas [22]). The Lesbian poet also claims, in ‘a particularly Ovidian tag’ (p. 76), that her nomen is already sung throughout the world (iam canitur toto nomen in orbe mecum [28]), just as Ovid hopes that his will be throughout his corpus (e.g. Am. 1.15.8 in toto semper ut orbe canar). In the light of this emphasis which, as T. demonstrates, Ovid has given to Sappho qua poet, it seems, though it lies beyond the scope of the volume under consideration, that the Epistula Sapphus may provide a particularly fruitful locus for the consideration not only of how authors position themselves in relation to their readers, but also of how they understand (and at times portray) themselves as readers of other works at the time of writing their own.

The place of the Epistula Sapphus (and the collection of single Heroides which it concludes) in relation to Ovid's immediate poetic predecessors and contemporaries is explored in Chapter 3, where T. clearly demonstrates the integral position that Her. 15 ought to hold in our understanding of Ovid's engagement with the wider discourses and practices of Augustan poets. Horace and Propertius, T. suggests, share three important features of poetic self-definition with Ovid, all of which may be descried in the Heroides and, in particular, in the Epistula Sapphus: (i) the claim to originality or primus-motif (cf. Ars 3.345–6 on the novelty of the epistles); (ii) the assimilation to a particular Greek poet (for Propertius this was Callimachus; for Horace, Alcaeus; for Ovid, Sappho); and (iii) aemulatio, not only of one's predecessors, but of one's peers (T. ably demonstrates how Ovid qua Sappho rivals Horace qua Alcaeus at Her. 15.29–30 through allusion to Carm. 2.13). When engaged in such (inter- and intratextual) close reading, T.’s book is at its strongest, as becomes clear in the insightful discussion of the relationship of Her. 14 with Horace's Carm. 3.11, and of Her. 15 with Virgil's tenth eclogue. In the latter case, the closural aspects of the two poems in relation to their respective collections are emphasised, and the presence of two poets (Sappho and Gallus) who are often held to be paradigmatic for their own generic modes of composition is treated to good effect.

This volume, though marred by poor editing, provides a very useful treatment of the Epistula Sapphus, locating it not only within the Heroides as a whole, but within the corpus of Ovid's early poetry and in relation to contemporary literature. It also makes an important contribution to our understanding of Ovid's self-fashioning.