Deforestation and Reforestation in Ovid’s <i>Metamorphoses</i>

Ovid’s Metamorphoses can claim to be perhaps the most species-diverse and certainly the most species-fluid poem from the ancient Greek and Roman world. Despite the iconic fame of Daphne, however, trees do and suffer more than act as metamorphic destinations for humans. In this article, I explore two passages, both of which feature trees not primarily as the goal of metamorphosis but as material beings in their own right: the trees uprooted by the centaurs in their battle with the Lapiths, and those summoned by Orpheus to listen to his extended song. Both passages have important metapoetic significance. The ancient association between the material of poetry and the materiality of wood brings additional tension to the ecocritical force of the poem. I suggest that it may be necessary sometimes to resist the simplistic thinking of this easy association.