# Pomona — Metamorphoses character guide

> Pomona in Metamorphoses by Ovid.

**Role:** supporting

**First appearance:** 0148-story-of-vertumnus-and-pomona

## Snapshot

A nymph who tends her orchards with such devotion that she bars her gates to suitors, until one god learns to approach her disguised as what she loves.

## Who they are

Pomona belongs to the race of wood-nymphs whose whole passion is cultivation: pruning, grafting, and coaxing fruit from reluctant boughs. Her flaw is not coldness but absorption — she reads desire as distraction, and every wooer at her wall becomes another trespass on her work. Vertumnus, god of seasons and shifting shapes, must therefore court her sideways, slipping past her defenses in borrowed forms. Their courtship anchors the poem's Italian book, where Ovid turns from Greek myth toward the origins of Rome's own landscape.

## In the story

### [Book XIV](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/metamorphoses_se/chapters/book-xiv)

A hamadryad skilled in garden culture who shuns love and marriage, but is courted by Vertumnus.

### [Story of Vertumnus and Pomona](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/metamorphoses_se/chapters/story-of-vertumnus-and-pomona)

A hamadryad nymph devoted to gardening and sworn to remain unmarried, who is courted by Vertumnus.

### [Story of Iphis and Anaxarete](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/metamorphoses_se/chapters/story-of-iphis-and-anaxarete)

The nymph who initially shuns love but is swayed by Vertumnus's story and his divine appearance.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/metamorphoses_se/characters/pomona
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/metamorphoses_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/metamorphoses_se/characters