The Hesitation of the Golden Bough: A Reexamination

Author(s): Charles Segal

Source: Hermes , 1968, 96. Bd., H. 1 (1968), pp. 74-79
Published by: Franz Steiner Verlag

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4475491

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 THE HESITATION OF THE GOLDEN BOUGH:
A REEXAMINATION

How important is the discrepancy between the Sibyl's instructions about

the golden bough in Aeneid 6, I46 -47 (namque ipse volens facilisque sequetur, /
si te fata vocant) and the hesitation of the bough itself when Aeneas plucks it
in lines 2IO-2II (corripit Aeneas extemplo avidusque refringit / cunctantem) ?
In recent volumes of the Classical Journal the two possible positions have been
conveniently restated. In the March issue of I964 (vol. 59, no. 6, pp. 265 -268)
Professor John D'ARMs argued that the discrepancy was indeed important.
Cunctantem, he suggested, connotes a degree of animate life; and the contra-
diction is an indication of a )>tension and a hint of sadness in these lines<(
(p. 266). Aeneas is led easily to the bough, )>but Vergil was equally intent to
show that the bough, a mysterious thing of fragile beauty, is treated with
violence and gives way with something like regret(( (p. 266). More recently
Professor William T. AVERY has maintained the opposite view. Writing in the
March, I966 issue of CJ (vol. 6i, pp. 269-272) Professor AVERY tries to remove
or greatly lessen the contradiction. I wish here to reexamine his argument.
Let me first quote the relevant lines of the Sixth Aeneid:
I43 Primo avulso non deficit alter
aureus, et simili frondescit virga metallo.
145 ergo alte vestiga oculis et rite repertum
carpe manu; namque ipse volens facilisque sequetur,
si te fata vocant; aliter non viribus ullis
I48 vincere nec duro poteris convellere ferro.
2IO Corripit Aeneas extemplo avidusque refringit
cunctantem, et vatis portat sub tecta Sibyllae.
Prof. AVERY has called attention to a number of points in I43-I48 which
are usually overlooked. He lays great stress on the implications of violence
in avulso in I43 and convellere in I48. In the past, he argues, the bough has
been plucked by force. Hence from this first description of its violent capture,
one may expect that Aeneas' attempt also will involve force:
))It is, then, apparent not only that cunctantem does not
represent the only instance of the reluctance of the bough
to part from the tree, but also that on earlier occasions its
resistance had been such that a word as strong as avello
could be used to describe its removal(( (p. 271).
The first passage, then, according to Prof. AVERY, prepares us for the cunc-
tantem of the second; and the contradiction which has bothered critics since
Servius is thus removed or lessened.
From this evidence, however, one could argue exactly the reverse. The
fact that the bough has been violently torn off in the past makes the cunc-

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 The Hesitation of the Golden Bough. A Reexamination 75

lantem in its encounter with Aeneas even more striking. Aeneas is singled out
for extraordinary success. The issue proves that he has in fact been >>called
by fate< (si te lata vocant, I47). Aliter in the next clause implicitly contrasts
his easy possession of the bough with the others (if any there were) who tried
unsuccessfully to possess it. Professor AVERY surely has a point in the violence
evoked by avulso. But may not this past violence done to the bough enhance
rather than mitigate the clash of 2I0-2II with the fact that Aeneas is sup-
posed to have no difficulty: ipse volens facilisque sequetur?
The emphasis in this first passage (I43-I48), however, is not necessarily
on the fact that the bough may have actually been torn off violently in the
past. It lies rather upon the ease with which Aeneas, called by the fates, may
be expected to succeed in the near future. Prof. AVERY points out that the
present tense of deficit (rather than the future) implies >>knowledge of a past
occasion or occasions when the bough had been plucked by another.. .
(p. 27I). True, Aen. 6, 408-6, which Prof. AVERY cites, imply that the bough
was plucked at least once before in the remote past (donum. .l. ongo Post
tempore visum, 6, 408f.). Yet the important point in primo avulso non deficit
alter / aureus is not the violence or non-violence involved in the separation
of the bough from its tree, but rather its miraculous rebirth with its strange
foliage, here underlined by aureus in a strong enjambement1. This immediate
rebirth of the bough is perhaps to be connected with the ease of Aeneas'
success. The Sibyl, herself surrounded by a mythical atmosphere, sees these
events from a more distant, less involved perspective. She thinks primarily of
the success which will follow upon the divine will (si te fata vocant, I47). The
violence is there, obviously, in her avulso and convellere, as Professor AVERY
points out. But it does not get the main stress in this passage (I43-I44). It
is when the Sibyl turns to the human executor of these instructions that she
makes the violence felt: carpe manu (I46); yet her next clause (namque ipse
volens ... .) shows her desire to glide quickly over this violence.
Carpe manu, Professor AVERY argues, means that Aeneas #is told to pluck
the bough by hand . . ., i. e. not to attack it with an ax, for ... he will have
no need of such a tool inasmuch as 'ipse volens facilisque sequetur, si te Fata
vocant'(< (p. 27I). It is questionable, however, that carpe manu means >>seize
with the naked hand, (( i. e. ))use no tool or weapon. (( CONINGTON remarks on the
passage,
>At any rate there does not appear to be any notion such as FORB[IGER]
supposes, that the bough is to be plucked by the hand, not separated by
the knife. What follows merely means that if the seeker is favoured, no
force will be necessary; if not, no force will be sufficient. 'Manu' then will

1 A ureus here in 6, 144 strongly echoes the aureus (also at the beginning of the verse)
in I37. On the emphasis given the word see Eduard NORDEN, P. Vergilius Maro, Aeneis
Buch VI, ed. 2 (Leipzig and Berlin I9I6) on 136ff. and I44 (PP. 175. I77).

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 76 CHARLES SEGAL

be, as it often is in Virg., semi-pleonastic, though it has not, as elsewhere, a

notion of force or personal agency, but forms a kind of contrast with
'oculis. 1'((
CONINGTON is probably right in his rejection of FORBIGER'S idea of plucking
with the bare hand; but it is not certain that manu here does not have, to
repeat CONINGTON, >as elsewhere, a notion of force or personal agency. (
Numerous instances can be cited to show that manu after a verb of action
is a vague equivalent for >)forcefully2.< Servius, for instance, paraphrases
Aen. 2, 434, ut caderem meruisse manu, by the expression id est fortiter dimicasse.
Aen. 9, 590 -592 describe Ascanius' first use of his bow in battle:
Turm primum bello celerem intendisse sagittamn
dicitur ante leras solitus terrere fugacis
Ascanius, lortemque manu fudisse Numanum ....
Despite the emphasis on the weapon itself in 590 (celerem sagittam), Ascanius
can be said in 592 to have killed his foe manu (editors are agreed that manu
modifies fudisse, not fortem).
The phrase carpe manu, then, taken in conjunction with Prof. AVERY'S
observation on avulso, has another significance. There is nothing in the Sibyl's
instructions to suggest that Aeneas was to be gentle. Indeed, the sequence of
verbs, decerpserit (I4I), avulso (I43), carte (I46), convellere (I48) seems to
preclude gentleness. Up to this point I can agree with Prof. AVERY'S attempt
to remove the contradiction. In lines 2IO-2II, Aeneas does exactly what the
Sibyl commands3. He breaks off the bough forcefully. The verbs are corripit
and refringit. Re/ringit, HENRY notes, >>so much stronger than frangit, expresses
the great force which Aeneas was obliged to exert in order to overcome the
resistance of the branchM. # So far we are within the limits of what we could
expect from the Sibyl's instructions. Aeneas was to use force, granted. But
ha was not to meet any resistance: ipse volens facilisque sequetur. One must
distinguish between two different issues here: on the one hand the hero's use
of force and on the other the willingness or unwillingness of his object to yield.
In the first item, the two passages agree. It is in the second item, with the
bough's cunctantem, that the difficulty or contradiction lies.
The Sibyl points out, of course, that force in itself will get Aeneas nothing.
He must also be called by the fates. But the necessity of using force has a
significance for Aeneas himself, if not for the actual accomplishment of his

1 John CONINGTON, P. Vergili Maronis Opera, London I8844 on 6, I45.

2 For other examples of manu used to express the general notion of force, but also
implying a tool or weapon of some sort see Aen. 7, I27; 12, 98; 12, 317; 12, 629.
3 Prof. AVERY thus well remarks, >The Sibyl's words are in no sense a guarantee that
Aeneas will not find it necessary to tug a bit on the bough . . ., <x CJ 6i, I966, 27I.
4 J. HENRY, Aeneidea, Dublin I889, III, 270. I do not, however, agree with HENRY'S
general interpretation of the passage: he admits the inconsistency, but refuses to grant it
any significance.

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 The Hesitation of the Golden Bough. A Reexamination 77

mission. He is at this point of the narrative the searching, questing hero put
to the test. Possession of the bough is itself a test:
sed non ante datur telluris operta subire
auricomos quam qui decerpserit arbore fetus (I40-14I).
The story conforms to a narrative pattern familiar from folklore and legend as
early as the Gilgamesh Epic: the hero must perform a series of extraordinary
deeds which increase in order of difficulty. The appearance of the twin doves -
a common motif in such tales, as NORDEN observed' - marks the passing of
the first test. Even here, however, Aeneas faces, if only for a moment, the
mysterious wood (aspectans silvam immensam, i86; nemore in tanto, I88). And
perhaps the death of Misenus which comes obtrusively between the instruc-
tions of I40ff. and the beginning of the quest in i83ff. constitutes a test of
a deeper sort. The grasping of the bough is the final test; and Aeneas must
be allowed to show some heroic temper. Hence he lays hold of the bough with
fierce energy and determination: corripit Aeneas extemplo avidusque refringit
.... Virgil keeps him cast in the role of the active, seeking hero, even though
the fata in I47 and the maternae aves in I93 undercut any real element of
danger. But here is where Virgil chooses to give us a surprise. The bough
suddenly ceases to be passive. All at once it manifests a disturbing and
mysterious life of its own which momentarily at least resists the impetuous
desire of the hero and checks our expectation of his totally smooth, divinely
prepared success.
Prof. AVERY asks, >Why so much ado about this particular inconsistency
in the A eneid ? 2(( At least two factors raise this discrepancy to a higher order
of magnitude than most others. First, as Prof. AVERY himself suggests, the
two passages in question follow within less than seventy lines of one another.
Unlike the >>classic discrepancies(< which Prof. AVERY cites, this one occurs
not between books that may have been written years apart, but within a
single closely knit section of a single book. Second, the golden bough is an
important element in the Sixth Book. I have argued in a forthcoming pair
of essays that it is in fact deeply connected with the meaning of the book
as a whole 3. It is a striking, indeed an extraordinary detail which is not, strictly
speaking, indispensable to the narrative. Virgil could have got Aeneas to the
underworld by other means. He has lavished great care both on the description
of the bough and on its place in the structure of the first third of the book.
He has given not one, but two elaborate descriptions of the bough (I36-I44,
204-9) and explicit instructions about the means by which it is to be

I NORDEN (above, p. 75 note i) I73-74- 2 AVERY (above, p. 76 note 3) 270.

3 C. P. SEGAL, Aeternum per Saecula Nomen - the Golden Bough and the Tragedy of
History: part I appeared in Arion, vol. 4, no. 4 and part II in Arion, vol. 5, no. i. The
reader is referred to these essays for a fuller study of the structure of book VI and the
place of the golden bough in the book.

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78 CHARLES SEGAL

possessed. Any one of these arguments might perhaps be brushed aside, but
their accumulated weight makes it difficult in the extreme to dismiss the
discrepancy between the two passages as without consequence or significance.
Precisely what significance should be attached to the discrepancy is
probably an insoluble question. We are dealing here with the multivalency
of a great poem, and, very likely, with an unresolved ambivalence in a complex
poet. I would like to suggest here one line of interpretation which I certainly
do not wish to be understood as in any sense final or exclusive of other ap-
proaches.
It is naturally inviting to connect the hesitation of the bough with some
of the other elements in the Aeneid that indicate a divided attitude to the
destiny of Rome and the cost of empire. On this view, the bough would appear
as another victim of the energetic advance of the conquering hero. Cunctantem,
in seeming to endow the branch with a will, consciousness, and quasi-animate
life of its own', brings its fate even closer to that of the human victims. The
bough's removal would then stand as the counterpart in the natural world to
the violence done to the Saturnian peace of remote Italy by the invaders,
reliquiae Danaum (I,30. I,598), who carry with them the bitter experience of
war, defeat, exile. The hesitation of the bough, plucked at the hero's first
entrance to the new land, perhaps foreshadows the sentiment which appears
especially strongly in the catalogue of the Italian heroes at the end of book 7:
the regretful knowledge of what is lost when quiet centuries of calm and
innocence are suddenly awakened to action and progress. Of one doomed
Italian hero, Umbro, Virgil writes,
sed non Dardaniae medicari cuspidis ictum
evaluit neque eum iuvere in vulnera cantus
somniferi et Marsis quaesitae montibus herbae.
te nemus Angitiae, vitrea te Fucinus unda,
te liquidi flevere lacus. (7, 756-6o).
The bough, then, hidden in its immensa silva (6, i86), belongs to the
hitherto unviolated forests of the Hesperian land. It belongs thus to the same
order of reality as the ancient king, old Latinus, with his mythological,
Saturnian ancestry:
Rex arva Latinus et urbes
iam senior longa placidas in pace regebat.
hunc Fauno et nympha genitum Laurente Marica
accipimus; Fauno Picus pater, isque parentem
te, Saturne, refert, tu sanguinis ultimus auctor. (7, 45 _49)2

1 On the ))life* implied in cunctantem see J. D'ARMS, CJ 59, I964, 266-267.

2 On the Saturnian associations of primitive Italy see also the speech of Evander,
8, 3I4ff. Note that Evander's line on Saturn's rule, sic placida populos in pace regebat
(8, 325) echoes the description of Latinus in 7, 46. On the complexity of Virgil's attitudes

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 The Hesitation of the Golden Bough. A Reexamination 79

The bough itself is introduced with words which suggest darkness, concealment,
solitude: latet arbore opaca / aureus (6, I36-37). Yet it contains not only the
secret potential of its mysterious hiding-place, something of the essential
character of the new homeland, seat of the future aurea saecula (6, 792f.);
but it has also the lure and fascination of what is pure, beautiful, and inacces
sible. Hence too its suggestive association with the )>beautiful Proserpina in I42.
Something of the latent, but unawakened potential of the bough and its
dark forests perhaps lies also in the waiting maidenhood of the daughter of
the half-mythical king, iam matura viro, iam plenis nubilis annis (7, 53).
Lavinia too, like the bough, has to be won by force, with a hint perhaps at
violation in the violaverit of the simile in I2, 67ff. The forcible rending of the
bough, the violence surrounding the marriage of Lavinia, the driving of
Italy from pastoral calm into history all form a related constellation of motifs.
(Perhaps one could include here also the death of Camilla, a maiden like
Lavinia, connected with the Italian forests in which she spent her childhood,
and devoted to the virgin woodland goddess, Diana1). To enter upon the stage
of history is to lose peace and innocence; for Lavinia it means loss of virginity
in marriage, and for the maiden Camilla, death in war. The plucking of the
bough from its hidden place also has sexual overtones (one need think only
of the parallel with Genesis 2) which further strengthen the connections between
these themes. And it is Venus, the love-goddess, after all, who (indirectly)
guides the hero to the bough (cf. 6, I92 -I97).
The plucking of the bough, then, may be viewed as a symbolical anti-
cipation of the rude loss of innocence which awaits the peaceful forests of Italy.
Like Saturnian Italy and Saturnian Juno, the bough acquiesces perforce. Yet
Virgil's cunctantem depicts vividly and pathetically its momentary attempt
(for the attempt can be only momentary) to keep its integrity. As a golden
plant it is a magical token which the divinely aided and fated hero must and
will possess. But as a living growth it pulls back toward its slumberous vege-
tative life and its quiet past, hesitant to leave its dark, semi-mythical setting
for the harsh facts of historical reality.

Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington, D. C. CHARLES SEGAL

to the early Italy of the second half of the Aeneid see Margaret E. TAYLOR, Primitivism
in Virgil, AJP 76, I955, 26I-278, especially 268-270, 276.
1 On this aspect of Camilla see ibid., 273.
2 The sexual connotations of plucking or cutting trees, flowers, fruit, etc. hardly need
illustration. Pindar, Pyth. 9, IIO, frags. 107, 8 and io8, i (BOWRA = I22, 8 and I23, I
SNELL3); Euripides, Hippol. 73 ff.; Catull. II, 22 ff. come to mind at once. D'ARMS (above,

P. 78 note I) 267, without elaborating or developing the point, even speaks of >the
bough's fragility and rape. e And one might, in this context, reconsider the bough's con-
nection with Proserpina: *)Proserpin gathering flowers, / Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy
Dis / Was gathered (Milton, P. L. 4, 269ff.; also Hom. Hymn to Demeter, 6-20; Ovid,
Met. 5, 390-40I).

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