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Pomona College Magazine is published three times a year by Pomona College
550 N. College Ave, Claremont, CA 91711
Online Editor: Laura Tiffany
For editorial matters:
Editor: Mark Wood
Phone: (909) 621-8158
Fax: (909) 621-8203
PCM Editorial Guidelines
Contact Alumni Records for changes of address, class notes, or notice
of births or deaths.
Phone: (909) 621-8635
Fax: (909) 621-8535
Email: alumni@pomona.edu
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Mythology & History / David Alexander
The Goddess Pomona
The Goddess Pomona: A Harvest of Digressions
By David Alexander
Pomona College/Arion Press, 2007 / 84 pages, 18 color plates
(Special limited edition, not available for sale)
 Never one to settle for low-hanging fruit, former Pomona College
President David Alexander has reached deep into the tangled
branches of history and mythology to stock a delightful tome about
the little-known Roman goddess whose name the College bears.
Conceived by and for the Class of ’57 and published in a limited
edition by 1957 graduate Andrew Hoyem’s Arion Press, The Goddess
Pomona: A Harvest of Digressions begins with the founding of the
College and its naming. Pomona, the city, owed its appellation to an
1875 contest won by a classically-minded (and apparently hopeful)
citrus grower. The city was the College’s first home, and the
founders’ naming decision reflected their gratitude for its support.
Classically trained and broadly knowledgeable, Alexander then takes
us further into the past to search for references to our eponymous deity,
“an obscure rural Italo-Roman goddess of poma, or fruit . . . whose cult
was absorbed into the Roman religion,” and who, despite the importance
of fruit to life, did not rank high among divinities (Robigus,
god of mildew, was, for example, deemed more worthy of propitiation).
Through the Metamorphoses of Ovid (first century C.E.)
whose version of Pomona’s lineage has prevailed, we learn that she
was courted by Vertumnus, god of the changing year. The union is
significant—combining Pomona’s orchard with Vertumnus’s “ripening”
seasonal influence. We learn that Pomona’s name can be found
attached to books, an opera, a ballet, and a butterfly, as well as to
place names throughout the United States, abroad, and even in
space—the asteroid “32 Pomona” was discovered in 1854.
One beautifully illustrated chapter details “sightings” of Pomona
in works of art from Versailles and New York to Claremont. On
campus, a bronze relief of the goddess, modeled on one in the
Uffizi, surveys Marston Quadrangle from the west foyer of the
Smith Campus Center, and a rather more muscular version attributed
to 19th-century French painter Thomas Couture can be found
in the Pomona College Museum of Art.
In the final chapter, Alexander makes clear that for true Pomona-philes, there is much left to discover. At the same time, he wonders
whether this “profusion of allusion” will continue in our day when
knowledge of classical mythology is no longer common currency. At
the very least, he writes, “We can be thankful that a classically minded
contest winner chose the name of Pomona for the town where the
little college in its little cottage had its promising start.”
—Marjorie L. Harth
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