The Allegory of the Golden Bough
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Digital Kenyon: Research, Scholarship, and Creative Exchange Faculty Publications Classics 1995 The Allegory of the Golden Bough Clifford Weber Kenyon College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digital.kenyon.edu/classics_pubs Part of the Classics Commons Recommended Citation Weber, Clifford, "The Allegory of the Golden Bough" (1995). Faculty Publications. Paper 11. https://digital.kenyon.edu/classics_pubs/11 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Classics at Digital Kenyon: Research, Scholarship, and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of Digital Kenyon: Research, Scholarship, and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE ALLEGORY OF THE GOLDEN BOUGH Author(s): Clifford Weber Source: Vergilius (1959-), Vol. 41 (1995), pp. 3-34 Published by: The Vergilian Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41587127 . Accessed: 10/10/2014 09:44 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Vergilian Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Vergilius (1959-). http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 138.28.20.205 on Fri, 10 Oct 2014 09:44:22 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE ALLEGORY OF THE GOLDEN BOUGH I Not too many years ago, an essay bearing the title above would have requiredan apology. ViktorPöschl's Die DichtkunstVirgils , for example, pub- lished in Englishin 1962, "displaysthroughout an uncompromisinglyhostile atti- tudetoward allegory."1 Indeed, the enormousprestige of thisbook may be largely responsiblefor the factthat in the wake of its publication,most criticism omitted even to mentionallegoresis as a methodof interpretingthe Aeneid. When David Thompsonwrote in 1970 thatPöschl's symbolicreading of the poem is itself"in manycases the veriestallegory,"2 this protest had the characterof a voice crying in thewilderness. That, however,was a quarterof a centuryago. Since thenthings have changed,and to such a degree thata discussionof Virgilianallegory now requiresbibliography rather than apology.3 Therefore, thanks to a criticalclimate thatno longerdismisses out of hand the possibilityof allegoryin Virgil, we may proceeddirectly to thepreliminary thesis of thispaper. II In Aeneid 6.724-51, Virgil adoptsthe mannerof Lucretiusand presentsa philosophicallyeclectic cosmologyaccording to whichthe macrocosmis a living organismcomposed of body and soul. The overtLucretianisms in thispassage have been notedin detailby Nordenand Austin.4Elsewhere in thesame book, however, 1 DavidThompson, "Allegory and Typology in theAeneid ," Arethusa3 (1970): 147, wherePöschl's book is called"the greatest modern critical work on the Aeneid ." 2 Ibid. 3 Threerecent bibliographies will make this clear. The first and most recent is inRaymond J. Starr,"Vergil's Seventh Eclogue and Its Readers:Biographical Allegory as an Interpretive StrategyinAntiquity and Late Antiquity," CP 90 (1995):129, nn. 1-2; 130,n. 8; 131,n. 12 (add p. 351to the pages cited in V. Langholfsarticle); 138, n. 50. Thesecond is inFrederick E. Brenk, "TheGates of Dreamsand an Imageof Life:Consolation and Allegory at theEnd of Vergil's AeneidVI," inStudies in Latin Literature and Roman History , ed. CarlDeroux, vol. 6 (Brussels, 1992),289, n. 37. Thethird, in Joseph Farrell, Vergil's "Georgics" and the Traditions ofAncient Epic (NewYork and Oxford, 1991), 258, n. 107; 262, n. 115. To thesources cited in these bibliographiesaddA. M. Bowie,"The Death of Priam: Allegory and History in the Aeneid ," CQ, n.s.,40 (1990):470-81. Allegoresis as a validapproach to theAeneid is predicatedon Virgil's familiaritywith Hellenistic allegorizations ofHomer. 4 EduardNorden, ed., P. VergiliusMaro: Aeneis Buch Vfi (Darmstadt, 1984), 309-10; R. G. Austin,ed., P. VergiliMaronìs Aenetdos Uber sextus (Oxford, 1977), 220-32. Additional sourcesare given in Michael Wigodsky, Vergil and Early Latin Poetry (Wiesbaden, 1972), 137, n. 701, andextensive bibliography onLucretius' general influence on Virgilis tobe foundin the foot- notesibid. 132-38. Vergilius3 This content downloaded from 138.28.20.205 on Fri, 10 Oct 2014 09:44:22 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Clifford Weber Virgil's debt to Lucretiusextends beyond words and phrasesto includeideas and conceptions.In lines 273-81, for example, Aeneas encountersan assemblageof fearfulabstractions encamped at theentrance to theunderworld: vestibulumante ipsum primisque in faucibusOrci Luctuset ultricesposuere cubilia Curae, pallentesquehabitant Morbi tristisque Senectus, et Metuset malesuadaFames ac turpisEgestas, terribilesvisu formae,Letumque Labosque; tumconsanguineus Leti Sopor et mala mentis Gaudia, mortiferumqueadverso in limineBellum, ferreiqueEumenidum thalami et Discordiademens vipereumcrinem vittis innexa cruentis. Here also, to be sure, Virgil is indebtedto Lucretiusfor phraseology-"turpis Egestas" in line 276 is a conflationof "turpiscontemptus" and "acris egestas" in Lucretius3.65- but he has borroweda conceptionas well. In Lucretius3.65-67, "turpiscontemptus" and "acris egestas"loiter before figurative gates of hell: turpisenim ferme contemptus et acris egestas semotaab dulci vita stabiliquevidetur et quasi iam letiportas cunctarier ante In Aeneid6.273, as Agnes K. Michelsonce noted,5these figurative gates reappear as an actual anteroomleading into Hades. Here Virgil has borroweda Lucretian imageand turnedit intomaterial reality.6 In thepages thatfollow, I will arguethat Virgil's Golden Bough is another instance,albeit a more complex one, of Lucretianimagery made real. More generally,I will also undertaketo show thatVirgil describes the Golden Bough in termsthat apply as well to theunion of bodyand soul in a livingorganism. Finally I will considersome implicationsof thisfact for the meaningof theGolden Bough " 5 AgnesK. Michels,"Lucretius and the Sixth Book of the Aeneid, AJP 65 (1944):138- 40. Lucretius'"leti portae" reappear as "letiianua" in 5.373, in a passagein which Virgil found furthermaterial for his description ofthe entrance tothe underworld. For "vasto immanis hiatu" of thecave in Aen. 6.237, Norden (n. 4 above)201 cites parallels in Euripides and Apollonius, but he doesnot mention the immediate source both of Virgil'sphrase and of itschthonic context, viz., Lucretius'"sed patet immani et vasto respectât hiatu," which occurs in 5.375 and refers to the "leti ianua"in 5.373. For the correspondence between Virgil's Avernian cave and Lucretius' figurative gateof death, see RaymondJ. Clark,Catabasis: Vergil and theWisdom-Tradition (Amsterdam, 1979),188-89. 6 This of debtto Lucretiusis discussed in R. aspect("remythologization") ' Virgil's " Philip Hardie,Virgil's Aeneid n: "Cosmos" and Imperium(Oxford, 1986), 178, 180-82. 4 Vergilius This content downloaded from 138.28.20.205 on Fri, 10 Oct 2014 09:44:22 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE ALLEGORYOF THEGOLDEN BOUGH in thecontext of Aeneid6 as a whole.7 Ill In Aeneid 4.441-46, Aeneas is comparedto an oak that,like Aeneas him- self in Book 6, "in Tartaratendit" (4.446). This "age-old similebetween men and trees"8is groundedin an anthropomorphicperception of treesthat is apparently universal.9In Latin, bracchia for rami, and coma for folia, are both trite poeticisms,and even in commonparlance, truncus is appliedto treetrunks as well as to human torsos.10Indeed, the formeris the primarymeaning of the word. Amphibologyis thusinherent in the nountruncus , and in Aeneid6.207 , thisaspect of the word is broughtto the foreby the additionof the adjectiveteres , whichis itselfused of the humananatomy no less thanof treesand theirbranches.11 Thus, removed from its context, "teretis . truncos" in Aeneid 6.207 would be ambiguous;it could referto trees,but it could equallywell referto humanbodies. The anthropomorphismof the Golden Bough and its oak is, if anything, even morepronounced in the passage in whichthey are firstmentioned. In 6.141, the Sibyl refersto the Bough as the "auricomos. fetus"of the oak. The trans- ferenceof the nounfetus fromanimals to plantsis too commonto allow muchto be made of thathere. Conversely,however, the adjectiveauricomus is unattested beforethis occurrence, and so it is notknown how (or, indeed,whether) this word was used beforeVirgil. The Greek adjectivesxpuffo/có/xoç and -коцод, on which 7 Forthe copious bibliography on the Golden Bough, see James E. G. Zetzel,"'Romane Memento':Justice and Judgment inAeneid 6," ТАРА119 (1989): 276, n. 51; CharlesP. Segal, EnciclopediaVirgiliana , vol. 4 (Rome,1988), 397, s.v. "Ramod'oro.'* " 8 WendellClausen, Virgil's Aeneid" and the Tradition ofHellenistic Poetry (Berkeley and LosAngeles, 1987), 50. 9 The lastword on this is Wilhelm Wald-und Feldkulte*- subject " Mannhardt, " (Berlin, 1904-5;reprinted Darmstadt, 1963); see esp. 1:1-4 ( Grundanschauung) and 2:23-31 ("Wechsel- beziehungzwischen Mensch und Baum"). Yet this immense work appears not to mention the impor- tantphenomenon of the ancient battle trophy, which consisted