The “Strangeness” of Hypermestra's Letter to Lynceus (Ov. Her. 14)

Ovid's Heroid 14 stands out as being quite different from the other single letters of the collection. Its main oddity lies in the fact that the motif of love appears to be absent and, by contrast, Hypermestra's pietas “overrepresented,” a circumstance that has inevitably attracted scholarly attention and solicited interpretive activity. In this paper, I intend to contribute to the debate by adding a further strand of interpretation, one that seeks to set the epistle against the backdrop of some recent historical events, namely Livia Drusilla's marriage to Octavian. I, therefore, suggest that the strangeness of Her. 14 may reside in its being suspended between the fictional world of elegy and the historical frame here delineated.