ABSTRACT
A Golden Age is a time of bliss, when people lead lives free from toil and anxiety and warfare, and nature amply provides for all their wants. Philosophers are not immune from the idealisation of the past entailed in Golden Age beliefs, although sometimes their employment of the myth is more conspicuously metaphorical than with some of the poets. The Golden Age of Latin literature also produced, appropriately enough, a plethora of past Golden Ages. The myth of the Golden Age contributes a cultural dimension to the anthropogonic myth about the divine origins of the human race indeed, the two are often combined. Features from other poetic accounts of the ages have been incorporated; elsewhere in the Metamorphoses, vegetarianism and kindness to animals are added to the Golden Age characteristics in that distant time, people were content with fruits and herbs, and birds, beasts and fishes could go about their business unharmed; but later meat-eating and blood-sacrifices were invented.
