Golden Bough (Aeneid)
The Golden Bough is a fantastical object described in one of the episodes of the Aeneid. The Aeneid is an epic poem by the Roman poet Virgil composed between 29 and 19 BCE, which narrates the adventures of the Trojan hero Aeneas after the Trojan War. The episode of the Golden Bough is found in its sixth book and is part of Aeneas's journey into the underworld. The bough itself acts as proof of Aeneas's divine favour, and allows him to pass into the underworld with the consent of its ferryman, Charon.
Virgil's portrayal of the bough has no direct literary antecedents, though it draws on several precedents from literature, folklore and philosophy. Scholars have connected it to, among others, the Golden Fleece in the story of the Argonauts; the characteristic attributes of deities such as Hermes, Dionysus and Circe; and the branches carried by prospective initiates into the Eleusinian Mysteries, a Greek religious rite centred around a symbolic journey into the underworld. Virgil associates it symbolically both with the world of the dead and that of the gods, and therefore with both death and immortality.
Early interpretations of the Golden Bough often gave it an allegorical function, particularly via Pythagorean and Neoplatonist philosophy, which interpreted it as a symbol of the choice between virtue and vice. Medieval commentators often considered it a symbol of wisdom, while Francis Bacon connected it to the life-force he believed to exist beneath the earth. In the twentieth century, scholars following the Harvard School interpretation of the Aeneid argued that Virgil's use of the bough reflected his ambivalence around the hero Aeneas and his mission to set in motion the rise of the Roman Empire.
In the fourth or fifth century CE, the commentator Servius connected the bough to the institution of the rex Nemorensis, a priesthood at Lake Nemi of the goddess Diana which was passed on by the killing of its current holder. This equation influenced the Scottish anthropologist James George Frazer, who used the bough as the title for his 1890 work on comparative religion. It was also an influential motif in the poetry of Seamus Heaney, who made several translations of Virgil's account of the episode, and the subject of an 1834 painting by J. M. W. Turner, which was used as the frontispiece for the early edtions of Frazer's book. Several scholars have also drawn parallels between the Golden Bough and significant objects in the fantasy works of J. R. R. Tolkien.
In Virgil's ''Aeneid''
The Aeneid, an epic poem composed by the Roman poet Virgil between 29 and 19 BCE, narrates the journey of Aeneas, a Trojan survivor of the Trojan War, to the land of Italy. Upon Aeneas's arrival in Italy, Deiphobe – the Sibyl of Cumae, a priestess of Apollo and an old woman over seven hundred years old – escorts him into the underworld to seek the shade of his father, Anchises.Before entering the underworld, Deiphobe tells Aeneas he must first bury Misenus, a comrade of his who has recently died, and also obtain the Golden Bough which grows in a grove nearby. This bough must be given as a gift to Proserpina, the queen of Pluto, king of the underworld. In the woods, Aeneas's mother, the goddess Venus, sends two doves to aid him in this difficult task, and these help him to find the tree. When Aeneas tears off the bough, a second golden bough springs up in its place, as the Sibyl had told him it would.
The Trojans, led by Corynaeus, carry out the funerary rites for Misenus, allowing Aeneas to start his descent into the Underworld. The Sibyl shows the Golden Bough to Charon, who only then allows them to enter his boat and cross the River Styx. Aeneas and the Sibyl move through the Underworld, seeing the shades of the dead as well as the punishments meted out in Tartarus. Aeneas puts the Golden Bough on the arched door of Pluto's palace, and goes through to the Elysian Fields, the home of the just, where he meets his father.
Antecedents and possible inspiration
Virgil's treatment of the Golden Bough merges folkloric, philosophical and literary precedents; it has no direct antecedents, and some early critics, such as the mid–first century CE commentator Lucius Annaeus Cornutus, considered the episode to have been entirely Virgil's invention. The classicist Raymond J. Clark connects the bough with the caduceus, the golden staff carried by the god Mercury, among whose roles was to escort the souls of the dead to the underworld. Nicholas Horsfall suggests that it may equally echo the golden wand of Circe in the Odyssey, the golden sceptres carried by the shades of Tiresias and Minos in the same poem, or the carved fig-branch left on the tomb of Prosymnus by the god Dionysus. The classicist Damien Nelis suggests that Virgil's Golden Bough echoes the narrative of the Greek hero Jason and the Argonauts; Jason is guided through the Clashing Rocks by a dove, and ultimately obtains the Golden Fleece which, like the bough, is found in an oak grove.The classicist Jan Bremmer suggests that the bough recalls the branches of myrtle carried by prospective initiates into the Eleusinian Mysteries, a mystery religion of ancient Attica centered around the myth of Proserpina and a symbolic descent into the Underworld. It may thus also allude to a Descent of Heracles, a lost poem in a tradition of works narrating the journey of the hero Heracles to the underworld during his twelve labours, since Heracles was first initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries. The classicist Agnes Michels suggests that Virgil may have been inspired by the 1st century BCE poet Meleager, whose poetic anthology The Garland included a reference to "the ever-golden branch of divine Plato shining all round with virtue".
The classicist Charles Segal connects the bough, via its close association with the death of Misenus, to the folkloric motif of another's death being required for a hero to enter the Underworld, as depicted with that of Elpenor in the Odyssey. Ancient Greek and Roman culture connected gold with both the world of the dead, particularly the chthonic deities Proserpina and Demeter, and the world of the Olympian gods, and therefore the concept of immortality.
In the fourth or fifth century CE, the commentator Servius connected the bough to the institution of the rex Nemorensis, a priest at Lake Nemi of the goddess Diana. The title of rex Nemorensis was passed on by the killing of its current holder. To challenge the priest for his office, a contender had to break off a branch from the grove of trees around the sanctuary, an act which was otherwise forbidden. Domizio Calderini and Pietro Crinito, two scholars of the Italian Renaissance, suggested that the Golden Bough should be identified as mistletoe, with which Virgil compares it in a simile. They therefore saw it as a reference to the ritual use of that plant by druids in ancient Celtic religion. This interpretation was taken up by James Sowerby in his 1805 work English Botany, and through this influenced the anthropologist James George Frazer in choosing the bough for the title of his 1890 volume on comparative religion and ritual.
Interpretation
The classicist Anthony Ossa-Richardson calls the Golden Bough "the central detail of the central book of what was, from late antiquity to the end of the Renaissance, the most significant and prestigious work of pagan literature in Western Europe". In Horsfall's formulation, it acts as a sort of talisman to grant Aeneas safe passage through the underworld, perhaps analagous to the diploma carried by Roman travellers on official business, or the moly given to Odysseus by Hermes to protect him from Circe's magic in the Odyssey.Virgil describes the bough as cunctantem as Aeneas attempts to remove it from its tree: this follows the Sibyl's pronouncement that the bough would "come easily of its own accord", if Aeneas's journey were ordained by fate. Servius attempted to neutralise ambivalent readings of the episode of the Golden Bough, which suggested that the bough's hesitation may imply that Aeneas is not truly favoured or endorsed by the gods. The classicist Richard F. Thomas argues that Servius's attempts to suppress this interpretation indicate that it was already current by the time of his commentary.
From the late seventeenth century, scholars began to analyse the Golden Bough as evidence for Virgil's biography, and to conjecture potential motivations for including it in the poem. The Danish scholar Ole Borch, in a 1688 dissertation on the history of chemistry, suggested that the bough's nature implied Virgil's familiarity with the principles of alchemy. In 1724, the English geologist John Beaumont suggested that Virgil had himself visited Cumae and been guided through its subterranean passages by a Sibyl.
In modern scholarship, ambivalent readings of the Golden Bough are characteristic of the Harvard School, a school of thought which attempts to trace pessimistic or anti-Augustan messages in the Aeneid and sees Aeneas as a flawed hero. R. A. Brooks's 1953 article "Discolor aura: Reflections on the Golden Bough", often considered the first work of the Harvard School, argued that previous commentators had neglected the symbolic and suggestive aspects of the Golden Bough episode. Brooks considers it to highlight Aeneas's ignorance of the full implications of his destiny, the distorted and ambiguous nature of Virgil's language, and Aeneas's inability to achieve a final state of success. Adam Parry, a prominent member of the Harvard School, describes the bough as "a symbol of splendor and lifelessness".
Charles Segal, another member of the Harvard School, discusses the discrepancy between the Sibyl's instructions to Aeneas – that the bough will "come easily of its own accord", if Aeneas's journey is ordained by fate – and what occurs when he reaches the bough; the bough momentarily resists him. He suggests that the episode's incidental nature to the plot of the Aeneid, as well as the close proximity between the instructions and the bough's resistance, suggests that Virgil intended the discrepancy and that it is significant to the poem. He sees Aeneas's taking of the bough as "a symbolical anticipation of the rude loss of innocence" that awaits the land of Italy, and more generally indicative of the poem's "divided attitude to the destiny of Rome and the cost of empire". Elsewhere, he writes that the bough is closely associated with death, a connection made through the juxtaposition of it with mentions of the recently dead Misenus, and other references to death and the afterlife. He argues, therefore, that it serves to unite the stories of MIsenus, Palinurus and Daedalus as narrated in the Aeneid.