75. Q. What may be considered as the chief work of Ovid? A. His “Metamorphoses.”
76. Q. What does this title literally mean? A. Changes of form.
77. Q. What is Ovid’s idea in the poem? A. To tell in his own way such legends of the teeming Greek mythology as deal with the transformations of men and women into animals, plants, or inanimate things.
78. Q. What has this poem been to subsequent poets? A. A great treasury of material.
79. Q. What episode, taken from the second book of “Metamorphoses,” is given by our author? A. Phæton driving the chariot of the sun.
80. Q. In what is the legend of Phæton conceived by many to have had its origin? A. In some meteorological fact—an extraordinary solar heat perhaps, producing drought and conflagration.
81. Q. Of what two other stories from the “Metamorphoses” does our author present a translation? A. The story of Daphne’s transformation into a laurel, and the tragic story of Niobe.
82. Q. What American writer has quite extensively treated Ovidian topics in a way that is at once instructive and delightful? A. Hawthorne.
83. Q. Ovid’s verse in the “Metamorphoses” is the same as what? A. As that of Virgil and Homer, namely, the dactylic hexameter.
84. Q. What has the general agreement of thoughtful minds tended to affirm in regard to Julius Cæsar? A. The sentence of Brutus, as given by Shakspere, that he was “the foremost man of all this world.”