Ancient poets and prose writers shape landscapes out of poetically and ritually significant topographies, highlighting certain rural settings as pleasurable and even erotic, as opposed to hard won and ethically stringent. Some scenes center on famous sites of religious and civic celebration, but their descriptions may overlap in tropes and tone with those more fully mythic and fictional. Portrayals of landscapes also frequently emphasize their physical inhabitation, the result of pilgrimage to and viewing of the setting's features, which activities often in turn spur creative emulation and angling for dominance. Landscapes are thus not neutral spaces, since they are always shaped by aesthetic negotiations that open out onto ethical and political valuations.