WORD: HEAVEN

In Metamorphoses, Ovid uses heaven in two different contexts. In "The Creation," "some god" makes order of the disoriented elements by separating them so that they may exist in their own environment. By this earth, the sea, air, and the cosmos took form. The first story refers to heaven as an opposing force to earth or as the OED defines it, "The part of the atmosphere above and closest to the earth's surface, within which humans observe terrestrial weather systems, flight, and other activity in the sky local to earth. Chiefly with allusion to biblical use." But this is not the only definition to which the word is prescribed. In "War with the Giants" the giants devise an invasion so that they may "rule in heaven by themselves" (21). This heaven is "the abode of the gods of classical mythology" (OED). The giants, and mortals, are in conflict with a celestial mass that their gods inhabit. The gods live in a world counter to earth, one that a human can never attain.