The story of Pythagoras’s Teachings: The Four Ages of Man is the fifth story in the fifteenth book of the Metamorphoses. Pythagoras’ achievements are well-known in the mathematical world. He is credited as being the first pure mathematician. Pythagoras and his followers, known as Pythagoreans, in addition to being interested in mathematics, studied music and philosophy. The story prior to Pythagoras’s Teachings: The Four Ages of Man transitions nicely into this story. Overall, the story is a speech to his group of followers on his teachings. Pythagoras’s Teachings:The Eternal Flux focuses on the ever-changing nature of all things. Nothing stays the same. Ovid presents time as a continual flowing motion, similar to how he presents seasons as a direct comparison to that of life. Pythagoras’ Teachings share a common theme of change; everything changes, even we are changing.

This myth includes Pythagoras’ Teachings on the four stages of man’s life, beginning with youth and ending with the sad, unavoidable death of man. He makes a comparison of man’s life with that of the four seasons. Spring is the first season and the beginning stages of man’s life; during this stage, flowers start to bloom while man begins to develop into full size form.

Ovid’s Metamorphoses continues into Pythagoras’ Teachings: The Elements. Here, nature is also presented as always-changing and transitory. Ovid continues with the theme of transformation in this myth.

Through Pythagoras’ speech, Ovid presents an overarching theme of transformation. Book 15 of the Metamorphoses falls in the recent Roman history portion. In the later portion of Pythagoras’ speech, Ovid predicts that Rome will be greater than any city on Earth. However, later Ovid predicts the fall of Rome, as all things are temporary and nothing is permanent, and therefore the success of Rome is bound to fall.