Vertumne , whose name means to turn , to change , was undoubtedly a king of Étrurie which, because of the care which it had taken of the fruits and the culture of the gardens, obtained, after its death, the honors of the divinity. What there is of some, it is that its worship passed from to the Étrusques to Rome where one regarded it as the god of the gardens and the orchards. Its attributions differed from those of Priape: it took care especially of the fruitfulness of the ground, with the germination of the plants, their flowering and the maturation of the fruits.

It had the privilege to be able to change form to its liking, and it had recourse to this artifice to be made like nymph Pomone which it chooses for wife. This happy and immortal couple ages and is renovated periodically without never dying. Vertumne gave its faith to the nymph and an inviolable fidelity keeps to him.

In this fable the allegory is transparent; it is clear that it is of the year and the uninterrupted succession of the seasons. Ovide seems to support this design of Vertumne, since he says that this god took successively to the figure D a plowman, of a harvester, of a vine grower, finally of an old woman, indicating thus spring the summer, the autumn and the winter.

Vertumne had a temple in Rome, close to the market to vegetables and the fruits of which he was the guardian god. It was represented under the figure of an young man with a grass crown of various species, holding of the left hand of the fruits, and the right-hand side a horn of plenty.

See too

• celebrates It portrait of Rodolphe II in Vertumne by Arcimboldo

Source

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