1621 Scarce Latin vellum Book ~ OVID's Heroines - HEROIDES EPISTOLAE (Letters of Heroines).

 

Author: OVID (Publius Ovidius Naso).
Title: Heroides epistolae Pub. Ovidii Nasonis. Et Auli Sabini responsiones: cum Guidonis Morilloni Argumentis ac Scholijs. His accesserunt Ioannis Baptistae Egnatij observationes.
Publisher: Brixiae (Brescia), Ex Typographia Iacobi Turlini, 1621.
Size : 6 "X 4 ".
Pages: 223 pages.
Binding: Attractive and very good original full vellum leather binding (hinges fine, overall slightly worn, soiled and scuffed) under a removable protective mylar cover.
Content: Very good content (bright, tight and clean, rare foxing or staining, ink stamp ex libris of Dominici Judicis Clausonensis on first endpaper - as shown).
Illustrations : Illustrated with the beautiful portrait Ovid.
 

The book: (No other copy is known, no record on WorldCat). Scarce and attractive Latin early 17th-century edition of the Heroides (The Heroines) or Epistulae Heroidum (Letters of Heroines), -- a collection of fifteen epistolary poems composed by Ovid in Latin elegiac couplets and presented as though written by a selection of aggrieved heroines of Greek and Roman mythology in an address to their heroic lovers who have in some way mistreated, neglected, or abandoned them. A further set of six poems, widely known as the Double Heroides and numbered 16 to 21 in modern scholarly editions, follows these individual letters and presents three separate exchanges of paired epistles: one each from a heroic lover to his absent beloved and from the heroine in return.

The author: Publius Ovidius Naso (20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature. The Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegists. Although Ovid enjoyed enormous popularity during his lifetime, the emperor Augustus banished him to a remote province on the Black Sea, where he remained until his death. Ovid himself attributes his exile to carmen et error, "a poem and a mistake", but his discretion in discussing the causes has resulted in much speculation among scholars.