[136] Whether this notion of propitiating Proserpine by a golden bough is Virg.'s own invention we cannot tell. Heyne acutely argues from v. 409 below that it probably was a feature in some other legend. The commentators have collected many things which might have suggested the invention to Virgil—the use of a bough in supplication, and also in lustration, the golden rod of Hermes, the gilded branch in the mysteries of Isis; while the appearance of the golden bough in the wood may conceivably have been suggested, as Heyne thinks, by the golden fleece hanging from the beech in the sacred grove of Hecate, Apoll. R. 4. 123 foll. Ov. M. 14. 113 follows Virg.
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John Conington. P. Vergili Maronis opera. P. Vergili Maronis Opera. The works of Virgil, with a Commentary by John Conington, M.A. Late Corpus Professor of Latin in the University of Oxford. London. Whittaker and Co., Ave Maria Lane. 1876.
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