SOURCE: Norwood, Frances. “Unity in Ovid's Metamorphoses.” The Classical Journal 59, no. 1 (October 1963): 170-74.

In the following essay, Norwood highlights the unifying elements of the Metamorphoses.

Ask me to state in one word what I consider the outstanding characteristic of Ovid's Metamorphoses and I answer without pausing for breath, “variety.” A catalogue of some 250 transformations, from chaos to Caesar, could be dreary: Ovid escapes monotony with a skill which leaves us gasping. How does he do it? “Had I a hundred tongues I could not list all the forms,” as the Sibyl said to Aeneas,¹ but I can at any rate list his chief tricks. First, he varies the length of his stories: we can never guess what we shall encounter next, a glancing reference or an epyllion. Second, he varies emphasis: he savors with slow relish every detail of the dinner party of Baucis and Philemon (8.637-89),² giving...