Golden Bough (Aeneid)

Common card · No. 367441

The Golden Bough is a fantastical object described in the Aeneid, an epic poem by the Roman poet Virgil composed between 29 and 19 BC narrating 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. He is directed to find it in an expansive forest, which he accomplishes with the aid of his mother, the goddess Venus, and to remove it from its host tree. Although Aeneas has been told that it will come easily – if his journey is ordained by fate – Virgil describes the bough as briefly hesitating before he takes it. 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 with, among others, the Golden Fleece in the story of the Argonauts; symbolic objects...

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