Vertumnus

Vertumnus is the god of seasons, change and plant growth, as well as gardens and fruit trees. He could change his form at will; using this power, according to Ovid's Metamorphoses (xiv), he tricked Pomona into talking to him by disguising himself as an old woman and gaining entry to her orchard, then using a narrative warning of the dangers of rejecting a suitor (the embedded tale of Iphis and Anaxarete) to seduce her. The tale of Vertumnus and Pomona has been called the only purely Latin tale in Ovid's Metamorphoses.

Vertumnus' cult arrived in Rome around 300 BC, and a temple to him was constructed on the Aventine Hill by 264 BC, the date when Volsinii (Etruscan Velzna) fell to the Romans. Propertius, the major literary source for the god, also asserts that the god was Etruscan, and came from Volsinii. The bronze statue replaced an ancient maple statue (xoanon) supposed to have been brought to Rome in the time of Romulus. The statue of Vortumnus (signum Vortumni) stood in a simple shrine located at the Vicus Tuscus near the Forum Romanum, and was decorated according to the changing seasons. In his poem about the god, Propertius has the statue of Vortumnus speak in first-person as if to a passer-by.