The interpretation of Ovid's epic that is argued here has three related parts that have not been drawn together before:

I. Ovid's panoramic presentation of myth, the Metamorphoses, presents provocative reflections in dramatic guise concerning human psychology, society, and art. Ovid is an engaged poet as well as an amusing one.

II. The Metamorphoses include, under the mantle of myth, pointed criticisms of the Emperor Augustus and his program of social, spiritual, and religious reform.

III. Stories about artists in the Metamorphoses were invented or elaborated by Ovid in order to illustrate the primacy of art and its spiritual value. Respect for love, truth, and human wisdom counts for more than fealty to the artifice of the new Rome.

The relevance of these parts to each other and their consequences will be made clear in the Conclusion (IV), which examines the function of art in life for Ovid and his hopes for permanence in a world of transitions.

The debate about how unified and consistent are the epic-like Histories of Herodotus is reminiscent of the form and redaction criticism developed around the Bible. The evangelical author, whose purpose is not to address posterity for a statement purely of the historical record, but rather to solicit his contemporaries in a catechetical fashion, shapes the historical deeds of the life and times of the Hebrews to suit a purpose, which includes history but is finally beyond mere history. The prophets, and their sources, are didactic; similarly Herodotus arranged his material for the purpose of highlighting the conflict of tyranny and freedom, of despotic empire and more democratic coalition. Books VII, VIII, and IX are the most elaborate and tight-woven of all the Herodotean logoi, just as the passion narratives that conclude the Gospels are the most factual and sustained narrative. The episodes prior to the climax life-death events in both the Histories and the Gospels compose a melange of fact and story, anecdote and reminiscence, pithy statement and imagined speeches, and colourful, fabulous deeds and wonders. Characters are introduced and biographies sketched: mini-dramas and conflicts among various interest groups build — all contributing to the climax and the great passion struggle. By way of introduction to these awesome events yet in the remembrances of living men, Matthew and Luke give the marvellous infancy narratives, and Herodotus presents the mythological rape stories of his prolog. And, just as the whole Bible begins with a marvellous blend of myth and history that is Genesis and ends with the epilog that is Apocalypse, so the Histories begin with the almost-out-of-memory stories of the kings’ daughters kidnapped, and end with the epilog where the ‘ghost’ of Cyrus appears and there discloses the final revelation of the inner impoverished core of Xerxes’ imperial court government.

While the metrical arrangement of the Catullan corpus has seemed to many scholars too artificial and inartistic to have been the poet's own choice, this opinion is now being challenged, in part because recent studies have shown that the collections could have been included in one roll, or Liber, and thus may be read as a single structure. Critics increasingly have sought the principles of organization in thematic correspondences or in the formation of ‘cycles’ within the three metrical groupings. Current studies have focused on the resonances in and among the groups, and on the function (and identification) of the first and last poems of each section and of the corpus as a whole.

Several scholars have suggested (although without unanimity in specifics, and for different reasons) that the three sections consist of poems 1-51, 61-64, and 65-116. Others (see Most, n. 3 below) argue that the long poems are arranged as a group, so that the corpus consists of the polymetrics, the long poems (61-68), and the short elegiacs (69-116). Any attempt to explain the arrangement of Catullus' poetry must address this controversy. One way to approach the problem is to examine c. 65, the first poem in elegiac meter. While some studies note that c. 65 hints at a ‘new poetic consciousness in Catullus’ this richly textured piece is still dismissed as ‘merely a covering letter.’ The following discussion seeks to discover whether c. 65 does simply accompany c. 66, or whether, reflecting the themes and motifs of the preceding poetry, it implies an alteration in the poet's sensibility.

Few extant Greek tragedies have been subjected to the sweeping formal and dramatic criticisms which have been directed towards the Prometheus Bound. Indeed, this play contains so many problems and idiosyncracies of metre, language, staging and structure that a large number of modern scholars have even come to question Aeschylean authorship of the play. The arguments on both sides of the authorship debate have been thoroughly presented by C. J. Herington and Mark Griffith, and little more of a decisive nature can be said on this subject unless further evidence should surface. This stalemate would, perhaps, be a fortunate circumstance, if it would encourage critics to put aside the unresolvable authorship question, to follow the commendable example of Oliver Taplin in his Stagecraft of Aeschylus, and to study the Prometheus Bound as a drama, as a theatrical production. It is time to seek dramatic answers to the dramatic problems which plague the Prometheus Bound.

One of the most important achievements of recent Horatian scholarship has been the rediscovery of structure — not the mechanical dissection of poems into component parts, but an awareness of how form is inseparable from content and how unity proceeds from design. Although the individual ode has by now received sufficient attention, the structure of the first lyric collection remains problematic. On the one hand, elaborate visual and numerological schemes have been proposed to account for the poems' placement. But such patterns could only be discovered by very selective handling of the evidence, and their neatness and level of abstraction raise doubts about their likelihood and significance. Partly as a corrective to these excesses, some recent scholars have gone to the other extreme, denying any extensive design. But while no single principle is likely to account for the disposition of all eighty-eight poems in twelve different meters, several considerations suggest that Horace had at least some concern for design. These include the well-documented interest in poetry books among Hellenistic and Roman writers; the aesthetic implications of the book roll, the physical format of which necessitates sequential reading; the existence of certain undisputed signs of arrangement in Odes I-III such as the frame of Odes I.1 and III. 30 or the grouping of Parade Odes (Odes I.1-9) and Roman Odes (Odes III. 1-6); and, finally, the relatively restricted thematic repertoire which facilitates the discovery of connections among odes by poet and reader alike. Since controls can be applied to this, as to all other literary study, the existence of larger structures and their relevance to an appreciation of the poetry is a legitimate subject for inquiry.