 The phrasing at the end of the Metamorphoses, in the account of Hercules' transfiguration upon Oeta and the likening of poetic achievement to spiritual transcendence captures some of the most extravagant claims that western culture has made for such achievement.Ovid was a uniquely important influence of Petrarch.Among the Ovidian texts to which Petrarch was attracted was one of those that Shakespeare fancied, and he gives it almost exactly Shakespeare's spin.