contribution, together with the conventional interpretation of the myth as charting a
progressive decline. He makes some important points about how the conventional
view has not done justice to Hesiod ’s particular vision, and he well stresses the funda-
mental tension between the state of the Golden Race and the current Iron Race (114);
but it is very strained to argue that the imagery of metal is not inherently degenerative.
- The topic has “generated an enormous amount of scholarly discussion,” as
Woodman and Martin (1996, 240) remark in the course of their valuable account. Key
references to general discussions concerning the ancient world include Lovejoy and
Boas 1935; Edelstein 1967; Gatz 1967; Cole 1967; Wallace-Hadrill 1982; Blundell 1986;
Kubusch 1986; Versnel 1994, 89 – 227; Campbell 2003, 336 – 53 and index s.v. “golden
age”; S. J. Harrison 2005. The bracing common sense of Horsfall (2003) is salutary, as
he reminds us that “what we think of as traditional Roman prejudice (‘new is worse ’,
‘development is degeneration’, etc.), has no bearing on the content and attitudes of
popular culture” (32). - As Froma Zeitlin points out to me, the main emphasis in archaic and classical
Greek versions of the myth of the age of Cronus is not so much on a succession of ages
or races as on the use of the rule of Cronus as a counterfactual world: see, above all,
Vernant 1981 and Vidal-Naquet 1981, and, on the importance of this theme in Old
Comedy, Dunbar 1995, 5 – 6. On Cronus and the festival of Cronia, see the important
discussion of Versnel 1994, 89 – 135. - Gatz 1967, 204 – 5; cf. Momigliano 1987, 33 – 35, on the limited afterlife of Hes-
iod ’s myth. - Cole 1967, 1.
- Wallace-Hadrill 1982, 25. As we shall see, the Augustan poets were certainly
also interested in the use of the Fall myth “to explain the present state of humanity.” At
the end of the chapter we return to the Augustan Golden Age.
21.Ann.3.26, with Woodman and Martin 1996, 239 – 40, on Tacitus’s “description
of primitive man and his ‘golden age.’ ” Note that Tacitus begins by talking of the “old-
est of mortals” (uetustissimi mortalium) and does not explicitly use a phrase such as
aureum saeculum,in the way that he had in his other “Golden Age” passage, in the
Dialogus De Oratoribus(12.1 – 4). In the DialogusMaternus praises poetry, in self-
consciously poetic fashion, as the mode offelix illud et, ut more nostro loquar, aureum
saeculum(3), before the corruption of crime and oratory: see Heilman 1989; Mayer
2001, 123 – 26. Heilmann well stresses that the view expressed in both passages is part
of a coherent and sophisticated historical vision. - Excellent discussion in Della Corte 1976; cf. Baier 1997, 176 – 79. The Varron-
ian passage is Dicaearchus fr. 54 in the new edition of Mirhady (2001). - Kubusch 1986, 47 – 51; Boys-Stones 2001, 14 – 17. This Dicaearchan view of the
Golden Age may be glimpsed behind Cicero’s modifications of Aratus’s visions of
plenty: see A. Barchiesi 1981, 184 – 87 on Cic. Arat.fr. 17 Traglia, suggesting Dicae-
notes to pages 112 – 113. 261