Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Laodamia.
The gallery
Laodamia Writing (from Ovid's Heroides)
Robinet Testard, c. 1496–1498
BnF Français 875: Laodamia at her desk composing the letter to Protesilaus — Ovid’s Heroides XIII in Octavien de Saint-Gelais’s French. The miniature makes the Phylacian widow the speaking subject of grief: husband first ashore at Troy, briefly returned from the dead.
Laodamia
George William Joy, c. 1870–1890
Joy’s Portsmouth canvas isolates the mourning bride of Protesilaus — Victorian pathos for the wife who loved a ghost and a waxen image. Painted in the century that also read Wordsworth’s Laodamia, it is among the few modern pictures that name her alone.
In play
Heroides XIII (Laodamia to Protesilaus)
Ovid
Ovid’s verse letter gives Laodamia her lasting voice — the newly wed wife begging Protesilaus not to be first ashore, then clinging to his shade.
Laodamia
William Wordsworth
Wordsworth’s poem retells the brief reunion of Laodamia and the ghost of Protesilaus — Romantic English afterlife of Ovid’s Phylacian widow.