The poems are nearly all on Corinna, a name which probably does not stand for any real person, but merely for an abstraction around which Ovid groups his own fancies. To suppose, as Sidonius Apollinaris did (23, 157)[69] that Augustus' daughter Julia was meant, is absurd, for Corinna is a _meretrix_. The identity of Corinna was unknown; _Am._ ii. 17, 28, 'Et multae per me nomen habere volunt. Novi aliquam, quae se circumferat esse Corinnam'; and twenty years afterwards Ovid could write (_A.A._ iii. 538), 'Et multi, quae sit nostra Corinna, rogant.' The _Amores_, in their original form, constituted Ovid's earliest work, written in his youth. The extant poems are not all that he wrote on Corinna; _Tr._ iv. 10, 57, 'Carmina cum primum populo iuvenilia legi, barba resecta mihi bisve semelve fuit. Moverat ingenium totam cantata per urbem nomine non vero dicta Corinna mihi. Multa quidem scripsi; sed quae vitiosa putavi, emendaturis ignibus ipse dedi.' The lament for Tibullus (iii. 9) must have been written in Ovid's twenty-fourth year. 2. _Heroides_.--Some of these at least were written before the second edition of the _Amores_, for in _Am._ ii. 18, 21-6 nine of them are mentioned by name. The title _Heroides_ is due to the grammarian Priscian; in the MSS. they are called _Epistulae_, and so Ovid himself refers to them, _A.A._ iii. 345, 'Vel tibi composita cantetur epistula voce: ignotum hoc aliis ille novavit opus.' Of the twenty letters in our collection 1-14 are letters from heroines to their lovers; 15-20 are in pairs, _e.g._ Paris to Helen and Helen to Paris. The authenticity of these last six is doubted, partly because the title _Heroides_ cannot apply to half of them, and also because of their inferiority in style. In the use of the epistolary form in love poetry Ovid had no predecessor, and he himself calls attention to the novelty (_A.A._ above). The style shows the influence of Ovid's rhetorical training: the Epistles are _suasoriae_ in verse, and of _suasoriae_ we know that he was particularly fond (Sen. _Contr._ ii. 10, 12, 'Declamabat Naso raro controversias et non nisi ethicas: libentius dicebat suasorias. Molesta illi erat omnis argumentatio.'). His matter he would naturally draw from Homer, the _Cypria_, Apollonius Rhodius, and the Greek tragedians. 3. Between the two editions of the _Amores_ he wrote the lost tragedy _Medea_. It was later than _Am._ iii. 1, where he pictures the Muses of Elegy and Tragedy as contending for his homage, and he finally decides (ll. 67-8), 'Exiguum vati concede, Tragoedia, tempus: tu labor aeternus; quod petit illa breve est.' On the other hand, it was earlier than _Am._ ii. 18, 13, 'Sceptra tamen sumpsi, curaque tragoedia nostra crevit, et huic operi quamlibet aptus eram.'