The Golden Age describes a time long ago when the ancients enjoyed a world
of universal peace and happiness. In his Stories of Gods and Heroes, Thomas
Bulfinch recounts just how they described this beautiful era and how it
eventually deteriorated into the miserable ages that eventually followed.
He says:
“The first age was an age of innocence and happiness, called the Golden Age.
Truth and right prevailed, though not enforced by law, nor was there any
magistrate to threaten or punish. The forest had not yet been robbed of its
trees to furnish timbers for vessels, nor had men built fortifications round
their town. There was no such things as swords, spears, or helmets. The
earth brought forth all things necessary for man, without his labor in
plowing or sowing. Perpetual spring reigned, flowers sprang up without
seed, the rivers flowed with milk and wine, and yellow honey distilled
from the oaks.
Forging a shield for warfare in the Silver Age, Athena (left) and Hera (right) look on, displayed on an ancient bas-relief
“Then succeeded the Silver Age, more savage of temper, and readier to the
strife of arms, yet not altogether wicked. The hardest and worst was the
Iron Age. Crime burst in like a flood, modesty, truth, and honor fled.
In their places came fraud and cunning, violence and the wicked love
of gain. Then seamen spread sails to the wind and the trees were torn
from the mountains to serve for keels to ships, and vex the face of the
ocean. The earth, which till now had been cultivated in common, began
to be divided off into possessions. Men were not satisfied with what
the surface produced, but must dig into its bowels, and draw forth
from thence the ores of metals. Mischievous iron and more mischievous
gold were produced. War sprang up, using both as weapons, the guest
was not safe in the friend’s house, and sons-in-law and fathers-in-law,
brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, could not trust one another.
Some wished their fathers dead, that they might come to the inheritance;
family love lay prostrate. The earth was wet with slaughter, and the gods
abandoned it, one by one . . .”
From a Page in J. A. Hammerton's Universal World History, Volume Three, The Hellenic Age Covering 478-133 B. C.
In his version of Metamorphoses, Nathan C. Brooks wrote an interesting
piece on The Golden Age and those ages that followed, and his words are
worth repeating. First, he wrote a brief summary, and then started his
commentary on a record originally set down by the Greek poet Hesiod,
who included it in his work Theogony, around the eighth century B.C.
Ovid, a Roman poet, living at the time of Christ, based his account of
Hesiod’s and his bolded words follow Brook’s comments that follow:
“Four ages successively arise, of which the golden is the first. In this
age innocence and happiness reign, and men subsist upon the bounty
of the earth. Saturn, at this time, holds the empire of the world.”
He went on in his “Explicatio” to explain that
“The deterioration of manners, from primitive innocence to extreme
wickedness, is represented under the names of metals, that lessen
respectively in purity and value. In the prophecy of Daniel [c. 600 B.C.],
the four principal monarchies are prefigured under the images of gold,
silver, brass, and iron. A similar designation of the four ages, by our
poet [Ovid] might seem derived from this source, were it not that
Hesiod, whom he follows, and who wrote anterior to Daniel, represented
different ages by the name of metals. The only difference between
Hesiod and Ovid is that the former has an additional age, called the
Heroic. The Golden Age of the poet is a tradition of the period of
man’s innocence, and residence in Paradise, when the elements
were pure and genial, the productions of the earth plentiful and
spontaneous, and the different animals peaceful and submissive.
All heathen nations have some tradition of this period.
The Bible's Book of Daniel used conspicuous similarities to the descriptions in Hesiod's account of The Golden Age
“In the comment of Hierocles upon the Golden Verses of Pythagoras,
we meet with the following explanation of the Golden Age: ‘We say the
Golden Age was the best among the generations of men, by reason
that we make a comparison of manners from the difference of metals;
for, gold is a matter wholly pure, and not at all allied unto earth, as
other things are of the same kinds, as silver, brass, and iron. Among
all, nature has ordained the principality unto gold, which alone does
not contract rust, but every one of the rest does, in proportion as it
partakes of the earth. Now, the rust of the earth, being compared with
the corruption contracted from the body, that holy and pure age, wholly
purged from all infection of wickedness, was very rightly called Golden.’
