A collection of epistolary love poems about fifteen Grecorroman mythological female characters who've been scorned, mistreated, neglected, or abandoned by their love interests (often, the heroes of the story. This is why the collection is also known under the title of Epistulae Heroidum (or Letters of Heroines).
Heroides (or Heroines) was written by Ovid in Latin. Since its scope is smaller than that of The Epic, the poems are arranged in elegiac couplets—i.e., a dactylic hexameter verse followed by a dactylic pentameter verse, both being more connected to each other than to the other lines.
Tropes:
- Epistolary Novel: While not a novel, the poems are a collection of letters from famous women to men they loved. Quite a few are addressed to men who abandoned them, the heroes of Classical Mythology frequently being a pack of Jerkasses; two of this type are intended for Jason of the Argonauts.
- Heart Is Where the Home Is: Penelope worries there's a love triangle between her (from Ithaca/Greece), her husband (also Ithacan/Greek), and a "foreign" woman (who the audience knows is the witch Circe from Aiaia, though Penelope doesn't actually know she exists). Not only is her husband with Circe until he finally leaves to come back home to Penelope, but she specifically worries that he won't come home because he'll find a more exotic, interesting woman (while she's too "provincial" and plain), making this trope Older Than Feudalism.
- Untranslated Title: At least in English, its title is left in Latin instead of being translated to Heroines.
