Vertumnus

Vertumnus was a Roman god best known from Ovid’s story of his courtship of the orchard nymph Pomona. He could take any shape he liked, and he won her by appearing as an old woman. A statue of Vertumnus stood in the Vicus Tuscus, on the road leading from the Forum towards the Circus Maximus, and Romans knew the god by it long before Ovid wrote.

Vertumnus and Pomona

Ovid tells the story in the Metamorphoses, in the time of the Latin king Proca. Pomona was a hamadryad, a nymph of the orchards, who loved fruit trees and gardens more than woods and streams. She carried a pruning hook rather than a javelin, trimmed branches, grafted shoots and watered the roots. Afraid of the violence of countrymen, she shut her orchard and avoided men. Satyrs, Pans crowned with pine, Silenus and the god who frightens thieves with his sickle all courted her, but Vertumnus loved her more than any of them (Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.623–642).

The Disguises

Ovid says that Vertumnus was no luckier than the others at first. Again and again he approached her in disguise. He came as a harvester carrying a basket of ears of grain, as a mower with hay wound round his head, as an ox-driver with a goad, as a pruner with a billhook and as a fruit-picker with a ladder. He appeared as a soldier with a sword and as a fisherman with a rod, using many shapes to gain a sight of her (Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.643–653).

At last he put on a coloured headband, leant on a stick with grey hair on his temples, and entered the garden as an old woman. He praised her fruit and kissed her in a way no real old woman would have done, then sat down on the ground to look up at the branches heavy with autumn fruit (Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.654–660).

The Old Woman’s Speech

Beside them stood an elm wound with a vine heavy with grapes. The old woman said that if the elm stood alone it would have only leaves to offer, and that the vine, if it were not wedded to the tree, would lie on the ground. She urged Pomona to take a husband, to refuse the common suitors and to choose Vertumnus, for whom she herself was ready to stand surety. He was not wandering the world but lived in this district, would love Pomona first and last, and could take any shape she wished, yet loved the same fruits she tended (Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.661–691).

She added a warning of the vengeance of the gods on hard hearts, with the example from Cyprus of Iphis and Anaxarete. Iphis, a low-born man, loved the noble Anaxarete, was spurned and hanged himself at her door. When she looked out at his funeral, she was turned to stone, and a statue of her was still kept at Salamis in a temple of Venus Prospiciens (Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.692–764).

Having failed to persuade her in this form, the god put off his old woman’s disguise and stood before her as a young man, as radiant as the sun breaking through the clouds. He was ready to use force, but force was not needed: the nymph was captured by the sight of him, and felt the same wound (Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.765–771). Ovid does not mention a wedding.

The Statue in Rome

Cicero mentions the statue of Vertumnus as a landmark on the road from the Forum to the Circus Maximus, the route of the sacred processions (Cicero, Against Verres 2.1.154), and Livy records a house bought for the state “by the statue of Vertumnus” behind the Old Shops (Livy 44.16.10). The scholar Varro says that the street was called the Vicus Tuscus after Etruscan settlers, and that Vertumnus stood there because he was the chief god of Etruria (Varro, On the Latin Language, book 5). In the Fasti, an old woman tells Ovid that the ground of the Forum and the Velabrum was once marsh, crossed by boat, at a time when the god who suits many shapes had not yet taken his name from the river that was turned aside (Ovid, Fasti 6.401–410).

Vertumnus Sources

Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.623–771; Ovid, Fasti 6.395–410; Cicero, Against Verres 2.1.154; Livy 44.16.10; Varro, On the Latin Language, book 5.

See Also: Pomona