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Who Invented the Golden Age?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

H. C. Baldry
H. C. Baldry
Affiliation:
The University of Cape Town
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Extract

There are many passages in ancient literature which depict an imaginary existence different from the hardships of real life-an existence blessed with Nature's bounty, untroubled by strife or want. Naturally this happy state is always placed somewhere or sometime outside normal human experience, whether ‘off the map’ in some remote quarter of the world, or in Elysium after death, or in the dim future or the distant past. Such an imaginary time of bliss in the past or the future has become known as the ‘golden age’. This is the name which modern scholars generally give to the ancient belief. The phrase is often echoed by modern poets. The same language has been transferred from the unknown to the known, and it has become a commonplace to describe an outstanding period of history or literature as a ‘golden age’.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 2 , Issue 1-2 , May 1952 , pp. 83 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1952

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References

page 83 note 1 Whatever the time or place, the picture itself is essentially the same. Cf. Rohde, , Psyche, Engl. tr., pp. 76 and 249 (n. 18).Google Scholar

page 84 note 1 The tradition, of course, may not be Greek in origin, but may have been derived by the Greeks from the East, where various parallels can be found, or shared by them with other peoples of the ancient world. Nilsson, (Minoan-Mycenaean Religion, p. 545Google Scholar) has shown that one version at any rate-the concept of Elysium-can be traced back through the Minoans to Egypt. The question whether the reference to Elysium in the Odyssey (4. 561–9) is earlier than Hesiod does not affect my argument.

page 84 note 2 ap. Philodemus, De Pietate, p. 51 (Gomperz, ).Google Scholar

page 84 note 3 Aristotle, , Ath. Pol. 16. 7; cf. [PI.] Hipparchus, 229 b.Google Scholar

page 84 note 4 ap. Athenaeus 6.267 e. For evidence that this was the first of such caricatures cf. 268 e.

page 84 note 5 Clouds 398, 1070; Plutus 581. Cf. Clouds 929.

page 85 note 1 Cf. Proclus, , in Remp. 2, p. 74 (Kroll).Google Scholar

page 85 note 2 Geschichte d. Gr. Religion, i. 485.Google Scholar

page 85 note 3 I assume that Works and Days 169 is spurious.

page 85 note 4 Adopted by Kaibel, Pohlenz, Farnell; rejected by Nilsson, , op. cit., pp. 480–6Google Scholar, but reaffirmed by Guthrie, , The Greeks and their Gods, pp. 52–53.Google Scholar

page 85 note 5 Works and Days 117–18.

page 85 note 6 P.-W., s.v. ‘Kronos’, col. 2007.

page 86 note 1 If Boeckh's is correct for the MSS. . Paton, (C.R. xxv, 1911, p. 205) suggests that may be a yellow-berried ivy, or perhaps mistletoe. But it seems more likely that Pindar has in mind the golden apples of the Hesperides.Google Scholar

page 86 note 2 A Historical Commentary on Thucydides, vol. i, p. 104.Google Scholar

page 86 note 3 Epistle 115. 13.

page 86 note 4 Ars Amat. 2. 277–8. Cf. Tibullus 1. 10. 2: the inventor of the sword is vere ferreus, not merely one of the iron race in the normally accepted sense.

page 87 note 1 5, 1113–14, 1241, 1423, 1428.

page 87 note 2 Met. 1. 141–2. Cf. Amores 3. 8. 35–38.

page 87 note 3 Epistle 90. 5 and 45. If Biicheler's reading secutast is right in para. 36, Seneca is here describing an age that followed the golden age. But the conclusion that the people of the golden age had no knowledge of gold remains valid. Cf. Phaedra 527–8, [Octavia] 419 and 426; also Virgil, , Georgic 2. 507; Propertius 3. 13; Manilius 1. 75 and 5. 277, 293; Persius 2. 59–60; Boethius, De Consol. Phil. 2. 5.Google Scholar

page 87 note 4 Orpheus and Greek Religion, p. 197.Google Scholar

page 88 note 1 Cicero in the De Nat. Deorum (2. 159) quotes three lines of this Aratus passage in incorrectly giving ferrea proles for χαλκε⋯η γενε⋯, and contrasts this with the aureum genus. Another Latin version is Ger manicus, Aratea 103 ff.

page 89 note 1 Cf. Conington on 324.

page 90 note 1 e.g. Calpurnius, Eel. 1. 42; 4. 5–8; Seneca, , Apocol. 4; Einsiedeln Eel. 2. 21–24; Consol. ad Liviam 343–4; Statius, Silv. 1. 6. 39–42Google Scholar; Ausonius, , Epist. 12. 27–30; Carmina Laiina Epigr. 285 (Bü;cheler).Google Scholar

page 90 note 2 Or. 36. 1.

page 90 note 3 Genethliakon Carl Robert, pp. 159 ff.Google Scholar

page 90 note 4 Religious Teachers of Greece, p. 77.Google Scholar

page 90 note 5 Hesiod, Works and Days, p. 16.Google Scholar

page 91 note 1 The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers p. 12.Google Scholar

page 91 note 2 Studien zum antiken Synkretismus aus Iran und Griechenland, Leipzig, 1926.Google Scholar

page 91 note 3 F.H.S. xlix (1929), p. 114.Google Scholar