The Golden Age, the reign of Saturn
In Greco-Roman mythology, the Golden Age is the first era of humankind, when Cronus, or for the Romans Saturn, ruled the world: people lived without toil, war or property, fed by an earth that produced crops on its own. Latin poets placed it in Italy, in the Latium where the exiled Saturn was said to have reigned, and called it the Saturnia regna, "the reign of Saturn".
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In Hesiod: the golden race
The myth first appears in Hesiod's Works and Days, around 700 BC. The poet describes five successive human "races": gold, silver, bronze, the heroes, and finally iron, his own and the worst. The golden race lived "in the time of Cronus": people knew neither toil nor misery, did not grow old, died as if falling asleep, and the earth gave them abundant fruit unprompted (109–126). After death they became kindly spirits watching over mortals.
Hesiod's account contains a paradox: in the Theogony, the same Cronus is the tyrant who swallows his children (see Saturn and Cronus). Yet his reign is the age of human happiness. That double face runs through the god's whole history.
In Rome: the Saturnia regna
Rome gave the myth a map. In Latin legend, Saturn, driven from heaven by Jupiter, lands in Italy and rules there. Not every author tells it the same way.
| Author | Work | What the text says |
|---|---|---|
| Virgil | Eclogue 4, line 6 (about 40 BC) | Redeunt Saturnia regna: the reign of Saturn returns, with the birth of a wondrous child |
| Virgil | Georgics 2.538 | Golden Saturn lived this life on earth: farming life is heir to the Golden Age |
| Virgil | Aeneid 8.319–327 | Saturn gathers the wild peoples of Latium and gives them laws; under him run the golden centuries, followed by war and the lust for possession |
| Virgil | Aeneid 6.792–794 | Anchises foretells that Augustus will found the Golden Age again in Latium, on the lands Saturn once ruled |
| Ovid | Metamorphoses 1.89–112 | An age without laws, judges, ships or walls; eternal spring, rivers of milk and nectar; it ends when Saturn is cast into Tartarus |
| Ovid | Fasti 1.233–238 | Saturn arrives by ship on the Tiber; Latium is named after his hiding place |
The pun on Latium (from latere, "to hide") is poetic etymology, not linguistic fact, but it anchored the myth in Rome's own landscape. The traditions also disagree on a key point: in the Aeneid, Saturn teaches people to farm, while in the Georgics (1.125–128) no one tilled the fields "before Jupiter". The Golden Age is sometimes an age without labor, sometimes the age when happy labor on the land begins.
Janus, Saturn's host
In the version passed down by Macrobius (Saturnalia 1.7), Saturn is welcomed by Janus, king of the land, who shares his kingdom with him. Janus founded a town on the Janiculum, Saturn another, Saturnia, on the Capitol. In memory of his arrival by sea, Rome's oldest bronze coins showed the two faces of Janus on one side and a ship's prow on the other. Astronomy has brought the two gods back together: one of Saturn's moons is named Janus.
A political myth
Romans of the late Republic lived through civil wars, and the return of the Golden Age became a political program: the fourth Eclogue announces it, the Aeneid credits it to Augustus, and imperial propaganda would keep using the image of the saeculum aureum, the golden century restored by the ruler. The Saturnalia did the same thing on the scale of a festival: for a few days masters and slaves shared a table, as in the time before slavery existed.
The Temple of Saturn offered an irony Romans noticed: the state's treasury was kept in the sanctuary of a god whose age had known neither coined gold nor property.
Afterlife: from Dante to Ingres
The fourth Eclogue had an unexpected destiny. Christians read it as a prophecy of the birth of Christ, and in Canto 22 of Purgatorio Dante has the poet Statius say that these lines of Virgil led him to the faith. In the Renaissance the Golden Age became a courtly theme: at the Medici court in Florence, the return of the Saturnia regna celebrated a peaceful reign, and in Tasso's Aminta a chorus praises the lovely Golden Age when whatever pleased was allowed. Cervantes turned it into a speech by Don Quixote to a group of goatherds (Part I, chapter 11), at once sincere and comic.
Painters gave the theme idyllic images, far from Goya's terrifying Saturn (see Saturn Devouring His Son): Lucas Cranach the Elder painted a Golden Age around 1530 with couples dancing in a walled garden, and Ingres left a large Golden Age unfinished at the Château de Dampierre. For a survey, see Saturn in painting. Today "golden age" simply means the best period of something, usually one we miss, which stays true to the myth: a golden age is always in the past.
FAQ
What is Saturn's Golden Age?
It is the first age of humankind in Greco-Roman mythology, under the rule of Cronus or Saturn. People lived without labor or war, and the earth produced everything by itself.
What does "Saturnia regna" mean?
The phrase means "the reign of Saturn" and refers to the Golden Age. It is famous from Virgil's line redeunt Saturnia regna, "the reign of Saturn returns", in the fourth Eclogue.
Why did the Golden Age end?
In Ovid, it ends when Jupiter overthrows Saturn and hurls him into Tartarus, which begins the Silver Age of seasons and labor. In Virgil, it declines through war and the greed for possessions.
How many ages of man are there?
Hesiod counts five: gold, silver, bronze, heroes and iron. Ovid keeps only four, dropping the age of heroes.
Sources
- Hesiod, Works and Days, lines 109–201
- Virgil, Eclogue 4; Georgics 1.125–128 and 2.538; Aeneid 6.792–794 and 8.319–327
- Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.89–150; Fasti 1.233–238
- Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.7