Finding a literary origin for the Golden Bough has been very difficult, as is
generally acknowledged. Servius, as I remember, says that the image comes from
Pythagoras' belief that the bough or Y-shape represents the sharp divergences
of fate. This is interesting but fails to say anything about gold. The only
clear verbal parallel comes as far as I know from Garland, a poem by Meleager
of Gadara who died about when V was born and who was quite well known: the
golden branch of the ever-divine Plato, shining all through with virtrue.
Mackail, who worked on both Meleager and V, remarks that this is one of the
best-ever few-word critical judgements, assuming that the great Plato not some
lesser poet of the same name is meant, and that it might have contributed to
V's conception of the Bough - David West makes this phrase the key to a
Platonist interpretation of much of the Katabasis story. For my less qualified
part I find it hard to think that V did not know of Meleager's phrase; moreover
we are aware that V, from his treatment of Berenice's Lock of Hair, which left
Berenice's head as unwillingly as Aeneas left Dido's realm, was well prepared
to take Hellenistic phrases which had been merely charming and turn them into
something much more stern and dramatic. Perhaps the word charming
underestimates Meleager, but I would think in spite of Mackail's praise that M
was not really trying to be profound. His theme is the association of a series
of poets with a series of flowers and fruits making the Garland: quite common
botanical things, like violets, spurge, cyclamen and pears. When he comes to
Plato does his golden branch come from a mythical or supernatural context
unlike all the other ones? Or is he again referring to something quite common?
The obvious candidate seems to me to the plant we know as Golden Rod, solidago
virgaurea, which does have a pleasantly bright appearance and also has inner
goodness in form of medicinal properties (good for kidney stones, apparently).
The point I was thinking of is that if V is exploiting an inherited, rather
charming, comparison of Plato to a common garden flower he is also transforming
the idea that he inherits, raising it to another plane, and one should not
assume that he retains from the tone of his original an uncritically flattering
view of political Platonism. How nice it would be to find another source that
took us out of the garden and into a rather more sacred and mythological realm
where V's Bough seems to belong. Unless Meleager is using his anthology to
encode some deeper ideas. - Martin Hughes
