Lyric or Epic

Ovid's poetry tends to be more lyric than epic, though it can be argued that his poetry is very much epic because of its length but to be truthful it is very far from the tales of such characters as Achilles and Agamemnon and therefore most regard it as a mere lyric poem. Though the poem is long it still doesn't have the overly dramatic or heroic taste of Catullus' poem 64. For example Ovid's Metamorphoses have a very dramatic, but not overly dramatic, taste. This would make some classify it as an epic on account of the dramaticism, but this is not the case because of the lack of heroic characters. The characters are instead the Greek gods and goddesses but not the heroic ones such as Achilles. Therefore, since his poems lack the heroes of epics, his poems are classified as strictly lyric.