In sixteenth-century Florence, as republican government yielded to rule by the once-exiled Medici clan, a verse of Virgil’s Aeneid began to attain new relevance. In Book Six of that poem, Aeneas is instructed to pluck a golden bough to serve as his passport to the underworld; his guide assures him that “after the first [branch] […]
Source : The Magnificence of the Medicis
