Golden Age
GOLDEN AGE. In its narrowest sense, the term Golden Age refers to a mode of utopian existence, described in a variety of Greek, Roman, and later Western Christian texts, that is freed from the vicissitudes of everyday life and is characterized by peace and plenty, with nature spontaneously producing food and humans living in close relationship to the gods. Most usually, the Golden Age is located temporally in the far past or, more rarely, in the distant future. Spatially, it is located in vague or far-off regions of the earth; more rarely, it is a place accessible only after death, as described by Pindar (fifth century BCE) in his portrait of the Elysian Fields (Olympian Ode 2.68–76). In its broadest sense, the term has been extended by some scholars to include any mythical, paradisical time of origins. As banalized in common discourse, golden age has been transformed into a quasi-historical label for any period of extraordinary wealth or human achievement.
The Hesiodic Myth and Its Development
The most particular reference to the Golden Age, although it does not use the term, is the account of the successive races of people given by the Greek author Hesiod (eighth century BCE) in his didactic poem Works and Days (106–201).
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