Here begins what I plan to be a series on Ovid’s Heroides, in preparation for an open online seminar on the Heroides with Chun Liu of Peking University, July 16-20, 2020. We will read and discuss several of the Heroides together. Please sign up and join us!
Penelope starts by letting Odysseus know she feels abandoned, and criticizes the Trojan war as not worth the pain it has caused to the women back home in Greece. Ovid makes it clear immediately that she knows the war is over (Troia iacet certe, Troy undoubtedly lies in ruins). Certe means that something is certain in the mind of the speaker, and is often used in protests: the unspoken protest here being “you should be back by now!” Lento “slow” in the first line also makes this complaint. Other key words express her lonliness: deserto (empty), frigida (cold), relicta (left behind), viduas (alone)—some of these adjectives apply to things (her bed, her hands) but they all emphasize her psychological state. Throughout the poem Ovid tests your knowledge of the Odyssey, and the first is an easy one, the reference to Penelope weaving (pendula tela). If you have read the Odyssey you know Penelope spends a good amount of time weaving, most famously the shroud of Laertes. The tela is the “warp,” the upright threads into which the “weft” is woven. It is said to be pendula (“hangning, suspended”) which just means that it is upright, not that it is swinging from the rafters.
Haec tua Pēnelopē lentō tibi mittit, Ulixe;
nīl mihi rescrībās attinet: ipse venī!
Troia iacet certē, Danaīs invīsa puellīs;
vix Priamus tantī tōtaque Troia fuit.
ō utinam tum, cum Lacedaemona classe petēbat,                                       5
obrutus īnsānīs esset adulter aquīs!
nōn ego dēsertō iacuissem frīgida lectō,
nec quererer tardōs īre relicta diēs;
nec mihi quaerentī spatiōsam fallere noctem
lassāret viduās pendula tēla manūs.                                                            10
 
Penelope refers to herself as puella in line 3, which seems not right, since she is a mature married woman, but I think Ovid is trying to say that she is still in love, that she is in the class of lovers (puella is the standard term for “beloved” in Roman love poetry). He emphasizes this in the next section where Penelope talks about how afraid she is that Odysseus will get hurt, and that this is how lovers are, nervous and worried (solliciti).  She grows pale at the mention of Hector’s name, or at the mention of the victory of one of Troy’s other great champions, Memnon or Sarpedon. Here the testing of your mythological knowledge gets more intense. Hector: no problem there if you know the Iliad; the mention of the death of Antilochus is much trickier. Antilochus was a son of Nestor, mentioned in the Odyssey 4.187 as having been killed by the Ethiopian champion Memnon, son of the Dawn and a late arrival to Troy, after the Iliad ends.  Tlepolemus, according to Iliad 5.628–665, was killed by Sarpedon, another great Trojan ally, from Lycia. She identifies these heroes by their victims because she says she gets nervous any time he gets news that any Greek has been killed, “the heart of the lover grows colder than ice.” Again this emotion portrays her as a lover, not so much a wife, though of course a wife would be nervous, too.
Quandō ego nōn timuī graviōra perīcula vēris?
rēs est sollicitī plēna timōris amor.
in tē fingēbam violentōs Trōas itūrōs;
nōmine in Hectoreō pallida semper eram.
sīve quis Antilochum nārrābat ab hoste revictum,                             15
Antilochus nostrī causa timōris erat;
sīve Menoetiadēn falsīs cecidisse sub armīs,
flēbam successū posse carēre dolōs.