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For Homer's Circe the story of 'Argo''s voyage was already well known. Although we cannot be sure that the 'Odyssey''s first audience was aware of Medea's role in Jason's story, we do know that by the time that Ovid came to write 'Heroides', she had already appeared in numerous Greek and Latin texts, in epic and lyric poetry and on the tragic stage. Given her complex textual and dramatic history, it seems hardly likely that any Ovidian Medea could actually be 'a simple girl'. And yet precisely this charge of 'simplicity' has been levelled against 'Heroides' 12 and its fictive author. I propose to argue that the Medea of 'Heroides' 12 is complex, not simple, and that her complexity derives from the fact that Ovid has positioned his elegiac heroine between past and future, guilt and innocence, epic and tragedy.