{
  "id": "pomona",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Pomona",
  "summary": "Latin nymph-goddess of fruit trees and orchards, named from the fruit she tends. Ovid alone tells her story: skilled with the pruning-knife and the graft, walled into her orchard against all suitors, she is courted by the shape-changing Vertumnus in the guise of reaper, ploughman, soldier, fisherman and old woman, and won when he shows his true form.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "roman",
    "deities",
    "orchards",
    "fruit",
    "vertumnus"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "flora"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "ceres"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "venus"
    },
    {
      "rel": "attested_in",
      "target": "metamorphoses"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "Who is Pomona in Roman mythology?",
    "What is Pomona the goddess of?",
    "Who is Vertumnus?",
    "How did Vertumnus win Pomona?",
    "Does Pomona have a Greek equivalent?",
    "What is the story of Iphis and Anaxarete?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "Ovid sets her under King Proca: \"Pomona lived, and none of all the Latin hamadryads could attend her garden with more skill, and none was more attentive to the fruitful trees, because of them her name was given to her\". Her hand \"never felt a javelin's weight\" but \"a sharp curved pruning-knife\"; she prunes, grafts \"a sucker in divided bark\" and waters the roots (Met. 14.609).",
      "sources": [
        "ovid-metamorphoses"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.95
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "She \"never felt the least desire of love\" and \"had her orchard closed within a wall\"; satyrs, \"Pans their brows wreathed with the pine\", Silenus and the thief-scaring garden god all courted her, but Vertumnus loved her most, coming \"disguised as a rough reaper\", as a haymaker, ploughman, pruner, fruit-picker, \"a soldier with a sword — a fisherman\" (Met. 14.609).",
      "sources": [
        "ovid-metamorphoses"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.95
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "As an old woman he pleads his own cause: he points to the elm \"with the vine embracing it\", warns that alone the vine \"would fall down\", and urges her to \"choose now Vertumnus as the partner of your couch\", a god who \"can most readily transform himself to any wanted shape\" (Met. 14.609).",
      "sources": [
        "ovid-metamorphoses"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.93
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "The old woman ends with the warning tale of Iphis, who hanged himself at cruel Anaxarete's door and whose statue Salamis keeps in a temple of \"Venus the watchful Goddess\"; then \"the god, fitted for every shape … laid the old woman's form aside and was again a youth\", and \"there was then no need of force. The lovely nymph was charmed\" (Met. 14.698).",
      "sources": [
        "ovid-metamorphoses"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.93
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [
    "Pomona is a Latin, not a Greek, figure — Ovid calls her a hamadryad of Latium and dates her by an Alban king (Met. 14.609); no equivalent_of is declared because the texts offer none.",
    "The story is one continuous passage, Met. 14.609–14.698 in card numbers, and it is the only ancient narrative of her.",
    "Vertumnus's disguises are a catalogue of Roman country labour — reaper, ploughman, pruner, soldier, fisherman — before the old woman."
  ],
  "faqs": [
    {
      "q": "What is Pomona the goddess of?",
      "claim": "c1"
    },
    {
      "q": "Who is Vertumnus?",
      "claim": "c2"
    },
    {
      "q": "How did Vertumnus win Pomona?",
      "claim": "c4"
    },
    {
      "q": "What is the story of Iphis and Anaxarete?",
      "claim": "c4"
    }
  ],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "theoretical",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "Gives the whole Pomona narrative by card number with the exact disguises and the elm-and-vine argument, and states that no Greek counterpart is attested rather than inventing one.",
  "confidence": 0.93,
  "last_verified": "2026-09-03",
  "media": [],
  "x": {
    "myth": {
      "pantheon": "roman",
      "kind": "deity",
      "group": "other",
      "domains": [
        "fruit trees",
        "orchards",
        "grafting",
        "gardens"
      ],
      "symbols": [
        "pruning-knife",
        "fruit",
        "orchard wall"
      ],
      "wikidata": "Q171236"
    }
  },
  "canonical_url": "https://mythosdata.dev/k/pomona",
  "api_url": "https://mythosdata.dev/api/k/pomona.json",
  "jsonld": {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "name": "Pomona",
    "description": "Latin nymph-goddess of fruit trees and orchards, named from the fruit she tends. Ovid alone tells her story: skilled with the pruning-knife and the graft, walled into her orchard against all suitors, she is courted by the shape-changing Vertumnus in the guise of reaper, ploughman, soldier, fisherman and old woman, and won when he shows his true form.",
    "url": "https://mythosdata.dev/k/pomona",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-09-03",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Ovid, Metamorphoses — tr. Brookes More (1922), Perseus TEI edition",
        "url": "https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-latinLit/blob/master/data/phi0959/phi006/phi0959.phi006.perseus-eng3.xml"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Pomona"
  }
}