What It Is
The Golden Bough is the golden branch that glows among the leaves of a dark holm oak and that the Sibyl of Cumae (Sibyl) demands of Aeneas as a passport to descend to the world of the dead and see his father, Anchises. It is consecrated to Proserpina, who wants it as tribute, and the rule that governs it admits no middle ground: if the fates call the one who seeks it, the bough comes willingly and without cost, and to one who is not called no force can tear it away, not even hard iron. Once the first is plucked, another does not fail, and the stem is covered with leaves of the same metal.
Where It Appears
Everything happens in Book VI. Aeneas arrives at Cumae and asks the Sibyl, first, for a seat in Latium for the wandering gods of Troy (The Penates), and then for what matters to him, to see his dead father, reminding her that he carried him out of the flames of Troy on his own shoulders:
Ire ad conspectum cari genitoris et ora / Contingat; doceas iter, et sacra ostia pandas. / Illum ego per flammas et mille sequentia tela / Eripui his humeris, medioque ex hoste recepi, let it be granted that I go to see the face of my dear father; teach the way and open the sacred gates. I snatched him from there on these shoulders, through flames and a thousand weapons pursuing, and took him back from the midst of the enemy.
The Sibyl does not dissuade him. She warns that descent is easy and that the return is the work, and then tells him what he must do:
facilis descensus Averni; / Noctes atque dies patet atri janua Ditis: / Sed revocare gradum, superasque evadere ad auras, / Hoc opus, hic labor est, easy is the descent to Avernus; night and day the gate of dark Dis stands open; but to retrace one's steps and escape to the upper air, this is the work, this is the labor.
Ergo alte vestiga oculis, et rite repertum / Carpe manu: namque ipse volens facilisque sequetur, / Si te fata vocant; aliter, non viribus ullis / Vincere, nec duro poteris convellere ferro, therefore, search for it with your eyes raised high, and when you find it, as is proper, pluck it with your hand: for it will follow you of its own will and with ease, if the fates call you; otherwise you will not conquer it with any force, nor tear it away with hard iron.
Before the bough there is a duty: a friend of Aeneas, Misenus, trumpeter of Hector and then of Aeneas, lies unburied and contaminates the fleet, and Aeneas is the first to cut wood for the pyre. In the forest he asks that the bough show itself, and two doves of his mother, Venus, guide him to the tree. The gold shines among the branches like mistletoe that turns green again in the depths of winter on a tree that did not sow it. Aeneas grabs it, and the bough hesitates:
Corripit extemplo Aeneas, avidusque refringit / Cunctantem, et vatis portat sub tecta Sibyllae, Aeneas seizes it at once, and eagerly breaks off the hesitating bough, and carries it beneath the roof of the prophetic Sibyl.
The bough serves its function on the way. At the river, Charon refuses to carry a living man and recalls Hercules, Theseus, and Pirithous, until the Sibyl shows the bough. Further on, Aeneas fixes it on the door of Proserpina and only then enters Elysium. Along this path he meets Palinurus, who asks for passage as an unburied man, Dido, who does not answer him, and Anchises, who escapes his embrace three times.
The gesture of plucking a branch had already cost Aeneas dearly in Book III. In Thrace, when he tears branches to cover an altar, he hears the voice of the bush that bleeds:
Quid miserum, Aenea, laceras? jam parce sepulto; / Parce pias scelerare manus: non me tibi Troja / Externum tulit, haud cruor hic de stipite manat. / Heu! fuge crudeles terras, fuge littus avarum., why do you tear at a wretch, Aeneas? Now spare the buried one; spare your pious hands from being defiled: Troy did not bear me to you as a stranger, and this blood does not flow from a trunk. Alas! Flee these cruel lands, flee this grasping shore.
What It Means
The bough is the mark of election: it yields to the one whom the fates call and to no other. Venus's doves lead Aeneas to it, which indicates that he is called, but the bough hesitates and he breaks it eagerly. The text sustains two readings: Aeneas is the chosen one and the bough yields slowly, or his haste forces what the Sibyl said could not be forced. The book, moreover, distrusts its own rules, and in the end the hero leaves the world of the dead through the ivory gate, the gate of false dreams.
The bough is a key, not a guarantee. The Sibyl says that descending is easy, that returning is the work, and that few have done it. The gold opens the door, and the cost of the path lies elsewhere: in the burial of Misenus that precedes the bough, in the unburied whom Charon refuses and among whom is Palinurus, in the father who escapes the embrace three times.
The bough does not run out: once one is plucked, another identical one grows, and descent remains possible for whoever is called, not as a single feat of Aeneas. The object is worth by whoever presents it: Charon, who refused a living man, yields when the Sibyl shows the bough, and at Proserpina's door, where Aeneas fixes it, the gold returns to the goddess who demanded it.
Aeneas's two branches are read as a pair. In Thrace the bush bleeds and speaks, and the poem resolves it with the flight from a land stained by the violation of hospitality. At Cumae the golden branch yields, though hesitantly, and opens the way. In both cases, plucking is an act that requires permission from a power above Aeneas: from a dead man who demands respect, from a goddess who exacts tribute.
Relationships
- Standard themes: Fate and Free Will, Duty, Home, Exile, and Return.
- Characters: Aeneas, Anchises, Venus, Dido.
- Nearby symbols: Dido's Pyre, whose shade Aeneas meets again thanks to the bough, and the Penates, the gods of Troy for whom Aeneas asks the Sibyl a seat in Latium.