Resumen de Hero Meets Penelope, Leander Meets Odysseus: the Intratextual Dialogue between Ov. "Her." 1 and "Her." 18–19
In this paper, I investigate the relationship between Penelope's letter to Odysseus (Her. 1) and the letters of Leander and Hero (Her. 18–19), especially Hero's letter to Leander (Her. 19). The peculiarity of this comparative approach lies mainly in the fact that whereas Penelope and Odysseus were one of the most famous couples in ancient literature and the protagonists of a great epic, the Odyssey, Leander and Hero were considerably less known in Rome during Ovid's time. To prove the close relationship between the letters of Penelope, Leander, and Hero, I present their numerous similarities, and then I suggest the reasons why Ovid took pains to compose the letters of Leander and Hero in a way so closely reminiscent of Penelope's letter to Odysseu
