The ways in which Ovid writes about transformation from vocality to speechlessness, and what that might mean, have offered and continue to offer much promise for analysis. Here Natoli gives the theme book-length treatment by applying the analytic lens of Latin words used in their relevant contexts, or schema theory, as explained more below. He doesn’t cover all of Ovid’s works, only the epic and exile poetry, and what he does with the epic and exile poetry is not so thorough as to exclude future treatments; he provides an appendix (221-2) that lists the instances of speech loss in the epic; there are forty, and he discusses only seven of those. There have already been many article-length treatments of this theme in recent scholarship, with some of the most interesting (in my opinion) being examinations of rape and loss of speech in Ovid’s epic as equivocal metaphors for oppression and censorship, and the guise of speech-loss in the exile poetry to represent Ovid’s chief challenge as a writer in exile. But an extended study has long been overdue.Although I would not call Natoli’s definitive, it provides one path of access to the concept and insights to build upon.