Vertumnus- Roman GodDeity
Also known as: Vortumnus and Voltumna
Description
He came to Pomona's walled garden as a harvester, then as a pruner, then as a soldier, a fisherman, an old woman. Each time she turned him away. When he finally showed his own face, young and bright, she let him stay.
Mythology & Lore
From Etruria
Vertumnus was Etruscan before he was Roman. As Voltumna, he was the chief deity of the Etruscan federation, and his temple at Fanum Voltumnae served as the meeting place for the twelve Etruscan cities. When Rome conquered Etruria, his statue was brought south and set up on the Vicus Tuscus, Etruscan Street, near the Forum. His name comes from "vertere," to turn, and his nature was change itself: the turning of seasons, the ripening of fruit, the shift from one form to another.
The Wooing of Pomona
In Ovid's telling, Pomona was a goddess of fruit trees who wanted nothing to do with suitors. She kept to her walled garden, pruning and grafting, and locked the gate against satyrs and field gods. Vertumnus tried every shape he knew. He came as a reaper carrying wheat, as a hay-stacker still damp with labor, as a soldier with a sword, as a fisherman with a rod. She noticed none of them.
Finally he came as an old woman, stooped and veiled. He entered the garden, praised her fruit, praised her, and kissed her with a warmth that should have given him away. Then, still in the old woman's voice, he told her the story of Iphis and Anaxarete: a young man who loved a girl so cold she would not look at him, who hanged himself at her door. The gods turned Anaxarete to stone where she stood watching the funeral procession. The warning was plain. Vertumnus dropped his disguise and stood before Pomona as he was: young, bright-faced, the god of everything that turns. She did not refuse him.
The Speaking Statue
Propertius wrote an elegy in the statue's own voice. Standing on the Vicus Tuscus, the stone Vertumnus introduced himself to passersby, boasted of his Etruscan blood, and claimed he could become anything: a girl in a Coan gown, a reaper, a soldier, a grape-picker, a horseman. The statue changed its garments with the seasons. In summer it wore a wreath of grain. In autumn it was dressed with grapes. The god of turning dressed the part all year.
His festival, the Vertumnalia, fell on August 13, when summer was giving way to autumn and the orchards were heavy with fruit not yet ripe.
Relationships
- Family
- Equivalent to