The Elm and the Vine

The Elm and the Vine were associated particularly by Latin authors. Because pruned elm trees acted as vine supports, this was taken as a symbol of marriage and imagery connected with their pairing also became common in Renaissance literature. Various fables were created out of their association in both Classical and later times. Although Aesop was not credited with these formerly, later fables hint at his authorship.

The 'marriage' of elm trees and vines continued in Italy from Roman times into the 20th century. There are references to this in both works on husbandry and in poetry. The most famous of the latter was Ovid's account of the myth of Vertumnus and Pomona in his Metamorphoses. Vertumnus takes the shape of an old woman and urges the reluctant goddess to marriage by pointing to the vine in her orchard. In the version by the work's first English translator, Arthur Golding:

The subject was commonly painted in Europe between the 16th - 18th centuries, and there are examples which feature a vine trained up an elm from Italy, the Netherlands, France and England (see the Gallery below). This was partly encouraged by the entry of the imagery into Emblem books, beginning with the most popular of them all, Andrea Alciato's Emblemata, in which it figures under the title Amicitia etiam post mortem durans (Friendship lasting even after death). This interpretation had been influenced by a first-century CE poem by Antipater of Thessalonica in which a withered plane tree (rather than an elm) recounts how the vine trained about it keeps it green. Alciato was followed in this interpretation by Geoffrey Whitney in England, using Alciato's illustration but accompanied by verses of his own. Others who took up this theme include Jean Jacques Boissard in his Emblemes latins (1588) and the Dutch poet Daniel Heinsius in his Emblemata Amato ria (1607). The latter makes the tree a plane, following the Greek epigram, interpreting it as the sign of undying love. The French version of his Latin poem reads

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