After 14 books and more than 15,000 lines of poetry, we have reached the final book of Ovid’s epic, the Metamorphoses. And in the final book we encounter the philosopher Pythagoras, who has the longest and most unusual soliloquy in a poem that has been filled with them. Pythagoras’ vision of reality seems to resemble closely Ovid’s himself: a world of constant change, in which nothing, neither body, nor city, nor meaning, stays fixed for long. Yet, as we consider the words of Pythagoras, gaps between his account and Ovid’s poetry appear, making it obvious that this is not a simple philosophical summation of all that has come before, stated as simply and ponderously as possible, to make sure no reader could miss the point. What, then, is Pythagoras’ speech doing here, seeming to be a capstone to this massive, propulsive work? What kinds of explanations are possible in poetry that are not possible in philosophy? Are the poet’s aspirations for immortality essential to his writing? If so, how does Ovid hope to keep his own name alive, even beyond the end of Rome and the Roman world? And, given that we are still reading him, how did he succeed?