¹ Barchiesi, A. (‘Problemi d'interpretazione in Ovidio’, MD 19 [1987] 74–6Google Scholar) makes two interesting observations on this transformation: Briséis' situation offered Ovid the opportunity to reverse a poetic convention under which it was usually a free-bom gentleman of good family who endured servitium anions for a female domestic (he notes that at Horace, Carm. 2.4.3Google Scholar, the ability of serva Briseis to move Achilles is offered as a solace to one in this predicament); Ovid uses the term dominus in this poem not only as the master of a slave but also as the reverse of the elegiac domina.

² Mack, S., Ovid (Yale 1988) 73Google Scholar.

³ Allodi, F.A., ‘Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder’, The Psychiatric Clinics of North America 17.2 (1994) 284–6Google ScholarPubMed, and Herman, J.L., Trauma and Recovery (London 1994)Google Scholar.

⁴ Hearst, P.C., Every Secret Thing (London 1982)Google Scholar.

⁵ Hearst (n.4) 199.

⁶ Jacobson, H., Ovid's Heroides (Princeton 1974) 37Google Scholar.

⁷ Allodi (n.3) 285. He explains that the name was derived from an episode in Sweden during which a young female hostage was emotionally drawn to her captor. In Patty Hearst's case, he considers that her change of heart towards her abductors was doubtless ‘a life-saving defense’.

⁸ Herman (n.3) 81 and 92.

⁹ Palmer, A., P. Ovidi Nasonis Heroides with the Greek Translation of Planudes (Oxford 1898) ad locGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ Verducci, F., Ovid's Toyshop of the Heart (Princeton 1985) 106–7Google Scholar.

¹¹ Spoth, F., Ovids Heroides als Elegien (Munich 1992) 74Google Scholar.

¹² Herman (n.3) 75 and 82.

¹³ I take line 107 as but one of several references that Briséis makes to her ‘marriage’ with Achilles. Wilkinson, L.P. (Ovid Recalled [Cambridge 1955] 90Google Scholar) is surely right in thinking that Ovid is working from II. 9.336, Achilles' special pleading that while Agamemnon has not touched the prizes of other Achaean chieftains, from himself alone (Wilkinson's interpretation here differs from those of many scholars because the punctuation of the Homeric line is disputed: some editors put a full stop after ’, thus making the Agamemnon's wife, Clytemnestra). In addition to allusions elsewhere in her letter, Briséis refers directly to her ‘marriage’ in lines 5, 6 and 52 (Achilles is her vir), in line 38 (sed non opus est tibi coniuge), in line 69 (she is a nupta), and in line 99 (nec me pro coniuge gessi). But Briseis is only too well aware that her ‘marriage’ is so informal that she can place no reliance on its legitimacy and so insecure that she must use argument and appeal to bolster the frailty of her claims. These claims wilt as her arguments and spirits falter; early in the letter Briséis writes to Achilles as her vir and her dominus combined (lines 5 and 6), but by its half-way point she can no longer sustain the combination (line 69: victorem captiva sequar, non nupta maritum), and she closes as an arnica and finally as a slave (lines 150 and 154).

¹⁴ Hall, J.B., ‘Conjectures in Ovid's Heroides’, ICS 15 (1990) 270Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Jacobson (n.6) 41.

¹⁶ Herman (n.3) 83.

¹⁷ Herman (n.3) 85.

¹⁸ Herman (n.3) 85.