Homer and the Epic Cycle in Ovid, Heroides 16-17

This essay discusses the Cypria and the Iliad as important background texts for Ovid, Heroides 16-17, the correspondence of Paris and Helen. It argues that Paris and Helen offer different literary perspectives of their potential elopement and its cause—the Judgment of Paris—which reflect the Cypria and the Iliad, respectively. These letters thus dramatize a narrative cause and effect between Cypria and Iliad at the same time that they underscore stylistic and thematic contrasts between the two poems.