Talk:Vertumnus

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Someone might want to check Ovid's Metamorphoses and bring the Wikipedia telling into closer allignment with Ovid. --Wetman 05:11, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Origins of Vertumnus Paradox

Danger, Will Robinson! First it says:

"Vertumnus' cult arrived at Rome around 300 BC (from his Etruscan counterpart: Voltumna)[...]"

Then it says

"His name comes from vertere meaning 'changing'."

Sorry, this crime scene needs to be examined more closely. Based on my instinct, if it's correct that the worship of this god "arrived in Rome around 300 BC", long after the rise of Etruria, then Etruscan Voltumna was loaned into Latin first as Vortumnus. Only **later** would it become Vertumnus, presumably via contamination with the pre-existing Latin word vertēre. Do we agree? In which case, the latter statement should read: "His original name in Latin was likely contaminated by the word vertēre 'to change', hence Vertumnus instead of Vortumnus." --Glengordon01 11:49, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

The idea, in the article, that his cult "arrived in Rome" sounds misleading too. When was it not there? (Various websites offer various dates in the fourth century BCE.) I've added a quote from Ovid's Fasti.
From Livy (44.16, describing events of 169 BCE) "Out of the sum allotted to him Tiberius Sempronius purchased for the State the dwelling-house of P. Africanus behind the "Old Shops" by the statue of Vertumnus, together with the butchers' stalls and the booths adjoining..." The statue had come from Etruscan Velzna (Volsini) when consul Marcus Fulvius Flaccus overpowered the city in 264 BCE, and was it in the wagon train of booty including 200 bronze statues that were melted down for coinage, save this one, set up in Vicus Tuscus? (Deborah Gage, "Art Thefts Through History" This date 264 BCE is sometimes given for the "arrival" of Vertumnus in Rome. I wouldn't know... --Wetman 07:36, 11 August 2006 (UTC)