Traditionally the storyhouse of minor epic source materials has been classical mythology, but inevitably, as suitable classical myths were exhausted, Renaissance poets turned to such sources as the Italian novella, or even--romantic heresy--to comparatively free invention. As if to compensate for these departures from orthodoxy, the later epyllionists leaned ever more heavily on allusions to classical mythology. Of the seven poems included here only three (=Pyramus and Thisbe, Mirrha, and The Scourge=) are based on a classical source (Ovid's =Metamorphoses=). Of the remaining four tales, two are drawn from Bandello apparently by way of Painter, and the last two (=Philos and Licia, Amos and Laura=), though greatly indebted to =Hero and Leander= overall, seem not to have drawn their characters or actions directly from either a classical or more contemporary source. These last two poems, then, from a Renaissance point of view, are comparatively free inventions. But both, and especially =Philos and Licia=, are a tissue of allusions to classical mythology. Gale in =Pyramus and Thisbe= expands Golding's translation of Ovid's =Metamorphoses=, IV, from some 130 to 480 lines, Barksted expands less than 300 lines of Golding's =Ovid=, X, to nearly 900, and H. A. enlarges the same tale to about 950 lines.[14] It should be emphasized, however, that these are not mere amplified translations, but reworkings of the classics, with significant departures from them. Gale, for example, prefaces the romance of Pyramus and Thisbe with their innocent meeting out-of-doors in an arbor, amid violets and damask roses. He has Venus, enraged at seeing these youngsters engaging in child-like rather than erotic play, command Cupid to shoot his arrows at them "As nought but death, their love-dart may remove" (Stanza 8). There is no counterpart to this opening scene in Golding's Ovid.