"Would God that namelesse I myght pleade"

In Book 9, as Prof. Anderson notes, Ovid introduces the act of writing into the scene of Byblis in love with her twin brother. It is an opportunity for Ovid once again to capitalize on a mirroring effect -- just as the girl loves an image of herself, so the depiction in writing of a writer writing offers a reflection upon its own production.

As the girl moves from discovery to confession to excuse to a vow to "conquer" her brother's love, she dramatizes the full gamut of rhetorical arts and strategies. It's a portrait, or meta-portrait, of the author as one who both seeks to find a way to name (nomine) the secrets of the heart and to conquer (vincere) the reader.

Writing is naming, re-writing and seduction, Ovid seems to say. Writers may seem to be impassioned Rousseaus nakedly revealing the insupportable wounds of the heart, but what author is not at the same time concerned to succeed with his/her public? Writing can both say and do, and these do not necessarily always coincide. The intricate interplay of passion, desire, deletion, search for the mot juste, plot, strategy, pathos and calculation is fully exhibited in the scene where Byblis writes on her wax tablet:

in latus erigitur cubitoque innixa sinistro'viderit: insanos' inquit 'fateamur amores!ei mihi, quo labor? quem mens mea concipit ignem?' et meditata manu componit verba trementi.dextra tenet ferrum, vacuam tenet altera ceram.incipit et dubitat, scribit damnatque tabellas,et notat et delet, mutat culpatque probatqueinque vicem sumptas ponit positasque resumit. quid velit ignorat; quicquid factura videtur,displicet. in vultu est audacia mixta pudori.scripta 'soror' fuerat; visum est delere sororemverbaque correctis incidere talia ceris:'quam, nisi tu dederis, non est habitura salutem, hanc tibi mittit amans: pudet, a, pudet edere nomen,et si quid cupiam quaeris, sine nomine vellemposset agi mea causa meo, nec cognita Byblisante forem, quam spes votorum certa fuisset.

So raysing up herself uppon her leftsyde shee enclynd,  And leaning on her elbow sayd: Let him advyse him whatTo doo, for I my franticke love will utter playne and flat. Alas to what ungraciousnesse intend I for to fall?What furie raging in my hart my senses dooth appall?
In thinking so, with trembling hand shee framed her to wryght The matter that her troubled mynd in musing did indyght. Her ryght hand holdes the pen, her left dooth hold the empty wax. She ginnes. Shee doutes, shee wryghtes: shee in the tables findeth lacks. She notes, she blurres, dislikes, and likes: and chaungeth this for that.
Shee layes away the booke, and takes it up. Shee wotes not what  She would herself. What ever thing shee myndeth for to doo Misliketh her. A shamefastnesse with boldenesse mixt theretoWas in her countnance. Shee had once writ Suster: Out agen The name of Suster for to raze shee thought it best. And then
She snatcht the tables up, and did theis following woords ingrave: The health which if thou give her not shee is not like to have Thy lover wisheth unto thee. I dare not ah for shame I dare not tell thee who I am, nor let thee heare my name. And if thou doo demaund of mee what thing I doo desyre,
Would God that namelesse I myght pleade the matter I requyre, And that I were unknowen to thee by name of Byblis, till Assurance of my sute were wrought according to my will.   

Metamorphoses Book 9, Golding translation

The image of the wax tablet comes from an interesting page on the history of writing.

Miletus and children

Miletus (Ancient Greek: Μίλητος)

Miletus was son of Apollo and Areia, daughter of Cleochus, of Crete.^[1] When Areia gave birth to her son she hid him at a place where the plant milax* was growing; Cleochus found the child there and named him Miletus after the plant.^[2] Another tradition relates that Miletus' mother by Apollo was Akakallis, the daughter of Minos. Fearing her father's wrath she exposed the child, but Apollo commanded the she-wolves to come down and nurse the child.^[3] Yet another source^[4] calls his mother Deione, and himself by the matronymic Deionides. Finally, one source gives Miletus as the son of Euxantius, himself son of Minos by a Telchinian woman Dexithea.^[2] 

He was loved by both Minos and Sarpedon, but showed preference for the latter, and this became the reason why Sarpedon was expelled from Crete by his brother. Following the advice of Sarpedon, Miletus also left Crete for Samos, then moved to Caria and became the mythical founder and eponym of the city of Miletus.^[1][2][3] Myths further relate that the hero Miletus founded the city only after slaying a giant named Asterius, son of Anax; and that the region known as Miletus was originally called 'Anactoria'.^[5] 

Miletus married either Eidothea, daughter of Eurytus, or Tragasia, daughter of Celaenus, or Cyanee, daughter of the river god Maeander, or Areia, and by her had a son Kaunos (Caunus) and a daughter Byblis, who happened to develop incestous feelings for each other.^{[6][3][7][8][9]}

*Milax = Smilax, a nymph beloved of Crocus, who in turn was beloved of Hermes. Crocus and Smilax are briefly alluded to -- Metamorphoses 4.283.

Byblis
In Greek mythology, Byblis or Bublis (Ancient Greek: Βυβλίς) was a daughter of Miletus. Her mother was either Tragasia, Cyanee, daughter of the river-god Meander, or Eidothea, daughter of King Eurytus of Caria. She fell in love with Caunus, her twin brother.

Caunus
In Greek mythology, Caunus or Kaunos (Ancient Greek: Καῦνος) was a son of Miletus, grandson of Apollo and brother of Byblis.

Caunus became the object of his own sister's passionate love. From some accounts it appears that Caunus was the first to develop the affection towards her;^[1][2] others describe Byblis' feelings as unrequited.^[3][4][5] All sources agree, however, that Caunus chose to flee from home in order to prevent himself from actually committing incest with Byblis, and that she followed him until she was completely exhausted by grief and died (or committed suicide). 

Caunus eventually came to Lycia, where he married the Naiad Pronoe and had by her a son Aegialus. Caunus became king of the land; when he died, Aegialus gathered all the people from scattered settlements in a newly founded city which he named Caunus after his father.^[1]

Miletus

Cities:

Miletus here and here.
Caunus
Byblos

Milesian Tales also here.

The Milesian tale (Milesiaka, in Latin fabula milesiaca, or Milesiae fabula) originates in ancient Greek and Roman literature. According to most authorities, it is a short story, fable, or folktale featuring love and adventure, usually being erotic and titillating. M. C. Howatson, in The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature (1989), voices the traditional view that it is the source "of such medieval collections of tales as the Gesta Romanorum, the Decameron of Boccaccio, and the Heptameron of Marguerite of Navarre." 

But Gottskálk Jensson of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, offers a dissenting view or corrective, arguing that the original Milesian tale was 

a type of first-person novel, a travelogue told from memory by a narrator who every now and then would relate how he encountered other characters who told him stories which he would then incorporate into the main tale through the rhetorical technique of narrative impersonation. [1] 

This resulted in "a complicated narrative fabric: a travelogue carried by a main narrator with numerous subordinate tales carried by subordinate narrative voices." 

. . . the name Milesian tale originates from the Milesiaka[1] of Aristides of Miletus (flourished 2nd century BCE), who was a writer of shameless and amusing tales with some salacious content and unexpected plot twists. Aristides set his tales in Miletus, which had a reputation for a luxurious, easy-going lifestyle, akin to that of Sybaris in Magna Graecia; there is no reason to think that he was in any sense "of" Miletus himself.

Milesian tales gained a reputation for ribaldry: Ovid, in Tristia, contrasts the boldness of Aristides and others with his own Ars Amatoria, for which he was punished by exile.

From Tristia:

Aristides associated himself with Milesian vice,
but Aristides wasn’t driven from his city.

Miletus and Maeander

Byblis before Ovid

First, a correction. The story of Byblis and Caunus was known prior to Ovid. A discussion of the tale is found in Parthenius of Nicaea's Erotica Pathemata (Of the Sorrows of Love), and it points to a few earlier sources where the story can be found in one form or another. 

Parthenius was brought to Rome in 72 BC, and is believed to have tutored Virgil. So while he apparently died in 14 AD, his work was probably produced much earlier.

Thanks to Theoi, the Erotica can be found here. What's striking is how devoid of literary elaboration these tales are in Parthenius' dry hands. Here, for example, is his story of Byblis and Caunus:

XI. THE STORY OF BYBLIS 

From Aristocritus39 History of Miletus and the Foundation of Caunus40 by Apollonius of Rhodes 

There are various forms of the story about Caunus and Byblis, the children of Miletus. Nicaenetus41 says that Caunus fell in love with his sister, and, being unable to rid himself of his passion, left his home and traveled far from his native land: he there founded a city to be inhabited by the scattered Ionian people. Nicaenetus speaks of him thus in his epic: –

Further he42 fared and there the Oecusian town founded, and took to wife Tragasia, Celaeneus’ daughter, who twain children bare: first Caunus, lover of right and law, and then fair Byblis, whom men likened to the tall junipers. Caunus was smitten, all against his will, with love for Byblis; straightway he left his home, and fled beyond Dia: Cyprus did he shun, the land of snakes, and wooded Capros too, and Caria’s holy streams: and then, his goal once reached, the built a township, first of all the Ionians. But his sister far away, poor Byblis, to an owl divinely changed still sat without Miletus’ gates, and wailed for Caunus to return, which might not be. 

However, most authors say that Byblis fell in love with Caunus, and made proposals to him, begging him not to stand by and see the sight of her utter misery. He was horrified at what she said, and crossed over to the country then inhabited by the Leleges, where the spring Echeneïs rises, and there founded the city called Caunus after himself. She, as her passion did not abate, and also because she blamed herself for Caunus’ exile, tied the fillets of her head-dress43 to an oak, and so made a noose for her neck. The following are my own lines on the subject: –

She, when she knew her brother’s cruel heart, plained louder than the nightingales in the groves who weep for ever the Sithonian44 lad; then to a rough oak tied her snood, and made a strangling noose, and laid therein her neck: for her Milesian virgins rent their robes. 

Some also say that from her tears sprang a stream called after her name, Byblis.

Ovid clearly went to town on this story, reversing the "poles" so that Byblis is the afflicted lover, introducing all the paraphenalia of writing, developing the passion and her means of relating it to her brother through several phases involving elaborate arguments, duplicities, and reversals.

So a question we might want to ask as we explore Byblis: Why does Ovid use this tale to give us, as Anderson notes, the first detailed description of a writer at work of which we have any record? Is there a reason why the art and craft of writing enter the Metamorphoses precisely at this point?

Note that the "Sithonian lad" of Parthenius is poor Itys, whom we last saw in the tale of Procne, Philomela, and Tereus in Book 6.

Letters and Lovers: Paris and Helen

With Byblis and Caunus in Metamorphoses 9, Ovid returns to the epistolary mode of his Heroides. Several of the letters are in pairs, with a lover's overture followed by a response from the beloved. The snippet below is taken from the pair which Ovid composed for Paris and Helen. Paris is visiting the palace of Menelaos at Sparta. Menelaos is away, leaving Helen to entertain his Phrygian guest.

Paris writes:

Don’t think I divided the waves with my ship carrying goods –

the wealth I have the gods can keep.

Nor have I come just to visit the towns of Greece:

my kingdom’s cities are far richer.

I seek you, whom lovely Venus drives towards my bed:

I wished for you before you were known to me.

Your face was in my mind before I saw you with my eyes:

news of your fame first brought me the wound.

Paris to Helen, from Ovid, Heroides

A prose version of Paris to Helen and Helen to Paris is here.

Wax writing tablet and styluses