When Nature Speaks
Sacred Landscapes and Living Elements in Greco-Roman Myth
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20249290 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Marianna Olivadese (0009-0008-6228-8923, University of Bologna, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 120 |
| Publication date | 2025-06-04 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Humanities (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2076-0787 • E-ISSN: 2076-0787 |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/h14060120 |
| OpenAlex | W4411033924 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 15 |
This article explores Greco-Roman mythology through the lens of ecocriticism, focusing on how sacred landscapes and natural elements were imagined as animate, divine, and morally instructive forces. In ancient Mediterranean cultures, nature was not merely a passive setting for human action but a dynamic presence—rivers that judged, groves that punished, and mountains that sheltered or revealed. Texts such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Virgil’s Georgics, and Homer’s epics present nature as both sacred and sentient, often intervening in human affairs through transformation, vengeance, or protection. Forests, springs, and coastlines functioned as thresholds between human and divine, civilization and wilderness, mortal and eternal. By analyzing these representations, this article reveals a rich tradition in which nature teaches, punishes, guides, and transforms, long before ecological consciousness became a formalized discipline. Drawing connections between classical literary landscapes and contemporary environmental concerns, the article argues that myth can inform today’s ecological imagination, offering an alternative to extractive, anthropocentric paradigms. Recovering the reverence and narrative agency once granted to nature in classical thought may help us rethink our ethical relationship with the environment in the age of climate crisis
Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Literature · Mythology · Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History · Archaeology and Historical Studies · Classical Antiquity Studies
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |