Metamorphoses

Uncle Jerry quotes Ovid in the summative discussion of cardigan as the framing text for the trilogy's question about permanence: 'There's a great line from Ovid. Omnia mutantur, nihil interit. All things do change, but nothing eternal ever changes.' The line is from the Metamorphoses (Book XV), Pythagoras' speech on the doctrine of universal flux balanced by eternal essence. Uncle Jerry deploys the quote to anchor the new theme 'The nature of permanence': the question of what lasts when everything is in motion, and whether anything is eternal.