Ovid was the most imitated and influential classical author in the Renaissance. This is not surprising, since many of the central preoccupations of his work seem almost to have been calculated to appeal to imitators. He is interested in how texts survive, and in their physical frailty. His writing also repeatedly meditates on the relationship between continuity and change in the universe, in individual lives, and within a poetic oeuvre. This passage from an epistle to his wife in the Tristia brings out all of these concerns: