ovid’s sappho and roman women love poets

Ovid’s discussions of Roman love poetry – as poet-speaker in the Amores and praeceptor amoris in the Ars Amatoria, in propria persona in his exile poems – do not evidently acknowledge the work of any Roman women love poetswhile according prominence to the Greek female poet Sappho. I account for this puzzling feature of his writing by arguing that he makes such acknowledgments in a subtle and indirect way, through allusions, often to speak critically of Roman women’s love poetry, and that he diminishes their work in order to identify himself as Sappho’s true Roman counterpart.