"Qua licet et sequitur pudor est miscendus Amor" (OV.epist.4.9): the Transgression of Limits and the Limits of Transgression on Phaedra’s Letter

Abstract

Phaedra’s epistle to Hippolytus generally stands out in the Heroides, among other reasons for being a letter of seduction. However, even though it is one at the beginning, later on Phaedra’s voice gradually changes until it becomes a discourse of open persuasion and finally, a supplication. To devise the words he attributes to the Cretan heroine, Ovid took his inspiration from those Euripides gave her earlier on in his tragedies, but in the elegiac transposition of the tragic heroine, he employed, above all, his own voice as elegiac poet, which determines Phaedra’s masculine attitudes in a position of power with respect to her young addressee. Nevertheless, the feminine voice of Sulpicia and that which the amicus Sulpiciae lends her are also employed. In the study of these combinations of voices we point up the transgression of limits of gender and and their limitations.