S. Alekou, “The Art of Death in Ovid’s Heroides”, Ch. Batistella (ed.), Ovid’s Heroides, Illinois Classical Studies 46.2, 2020 (forthcoming). Notwithstanding the presumably apparent focalization of Ovid’s Heroides on love, one may also identify a consistent emphasis being laid in this work on death. In this paper, I will put forward the claim that the real focus in Ovid’s collection is not on amor but on mors and that the amatory context is employed therein as a veiled commentary on Roman politics. The fictionalization of loss in Ovid’s Heroides has multiples facades. The epistles compose a set of epitaphic texts and literary memorials that recall incidents of tragic losses, murders and self-inflicted deaths. The letter becomes the literary refuge for women who experience physical isolation and social alienation, or have been marginalized and in quite a few occasions exiled, both in the mythological sphere and in literary tradition. While Ovid gives to these female figures shelter, enabling them to compose their ultimate words, the subject of death creates a sort of emergency and plays a decisive role in their self-portrayal as sympathetic victims. Dying becomes a means for persuasion also for the to-be-exiled poet who allusively endorses criticism on Augustan propaganda. Writing about the art of death becomes Ovid’s testimony of his poetic predecessors, the artists who have been defeated and violently silenced by power. The letter distances the fictional authors from their mythological roots, to elevate them to the realm of Roman life, law and society. The contextualization of the text will enable us to confirm that Ovid’s heroines are self-portrayed as being worthy of an honorable death, but also that their only means for reparation is Ovid’s literary survival.