The 15 books of the « Metamorphoses » are themselves an expression of programmatic meaning.
The poetry book of the Augustan age shows a predilection for multiples of 5 (Vergil 's « Eclogues » ; Tibullus, Book 1 ; Horace, Satires 1, Odes 2-4, and Epistles 1).
This preference is repeated in the Ovidian elegiac collections.
The first book of each of the three collections of elegies divided into several books (i. e., « Amores », 15 elegies ; « Tristia », 10 ; and « Ex Ponto », 10) seems to be based upon this principle.
The division of the « Metamorphoses » into 15 books signals its distance from the traditional epic, which is characterized by a number corresponding to a multiple of 6.
