One Long Series

I have been reading prose fiction, graphic fiction and Latin verse. Sometimes it seems as if all of literature is a single long series in which it is always possible to refer to past installments. Poul Anderson variously refers to Ilion, Ys, Hrolf Kraki, Beowulf, MacBeth, Holger Danske, Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes, Superman and James Bond.

My recent reading has included the following connections:

Anderson's "Goat Song" is a futuristic sf retelling of the Orpheus myth;
Neil Gaiman retells this myth in his graphic fantasy, The Sandman;
Mike Carey's The Furies is a sequel to Gaiman's The Sandman;
The Furies features a Goat Song Theater Company;
Carey explains that "goat song" is the original meaning of "tragedy";
he also shows Baucis and Philemon still conscious and able to bleed as trees;
our Latin class read Ovid on Baucis et Philemon and Virgil on Orpheus.