Landscape in Ovid's Metamorphoses: A Study in the Transformation of a Literacy Symbol

In ancient poetry Nature is not only the spatial and geographical framework of human action. It may also form a metaphor for various aspects of the human condition. Landscape in poetry may trace the outlines of the poet's world and may express elements in the world-view and moral and metaphysical presuppositions which underly his poem. Charles P. Segal, Professor of Classics at the Brown University, Providence, shows that the natural world has a similar symbolic function in Ovid's work.