TOP 10 GOLDEN AGES

 

Yes – it’s a top ten on the spot for my Top 10 Golden Ages.

Golden Age was my top entry for my Top 10 Ages – for usage of the term age in culture or history – connoting the best, either as primordial paradise or peak perfection. As I noted in that entry, it has been adapted for common usage to connote peak periods in history or culture, more than enough for its own top ten. So here it is!

 

(1) CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY – GOLDEN AGE

 

The OG Golden Age – the original usage in classical mythology to connote the primal paradisiacal state of humanity, as by Hesiod or Ovid.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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(2) BIBLICAL – GARDEN OF EDEN

 

“When the apple reddens,

Never pry,

Lest we lose our Edens,

Eve and I”

 

The only other OG Golden Age to rival that of classical mythology – and with, dare I say it, the core concept explicit or implicit in a Golden Age, that of original sin to go with our original paradise. Every Eden has its serpent, its forbidden fruit or its temptation – else how does a Golden Age fall?

Eden was of course the original earthly paradise, but arguably Biblical mythology has the promise of a return to Golden Age paradise in heaven.

You could also argue for the reigns of King David and King Solomon as the Golden Age of Biblical Israel, after which it would be divided into two kingdoms, each of which would fall in turn. Not coincidentally, David was so golden that it is from his lineage the Messiah was prophesied to rise (Jesus for Christianity and still to come for Judaism), through whom heaven and earth will return to its golden age.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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(3) ARCADIA & UTOPIA

 

Et in Arcadia Ego.

Arcadia “refers to a vision of pastoralism and harmony with nature”, from the classical Greek province of the same name “as a poetic byword for an idyllic vision of unspoiled wilderness” or garden for shepherds.

As such, it combines something of the Golden Age of classical mythology and the Garden of Eden – “it is seen as a lost, Edenic form of ife, contrasting to the progressive nature of Utopian desires”.

Hence Arcadia tends to evoke an unattainable and lost Golden Age from the past, while Utopia – despite its literal name “no place” originating from Sir Thomas More’s book of that title for a fictional island – usually evokes at least a potential Golden Age in the present or future.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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(4) ROUSSEAU – STATE OF NATURE

 

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”

Perhaps the most enduring modern mythic golden age – Rousseau’s idyllic “state of nature”, as encapsulated in the “born free” part of his iconic quotation of it.

On the other hand, it is opposed by the equally enduring mythic dark age state of nature proposed by Hobbes.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(5) CHILDHOOD

 

Okay, okay – perhaps we don’t have to go so far as to propose the state of nature as golden age, what with life in it being “nasty, poor, brutish and short” as declared by Hobbes, but instead propose our state of innocence and joy in childhood as a golden age? Or narrow it even further to our hypothetical state of bliss in the womb – the subconscious or primal memory of which is often proposed as the origin of myths of paradise or golden ages from which we have fallen.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(6) CLASSICAL GREECE / ATHENS

 

And now we come to the first of my top ten entries for golden ages proposed for peak periods of culture or history – the Golden Age of Classical Greece or Athens, an Athenocentric golden age proposed for classical Greece of Athens from 480 BC to 404 BC, from Persian to Peloponnesian Wars and including the Age of Pericles.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(7) PAX ROMANA / THE FIVE GOOD EMPERORS

 

The zenith of the Roman Empire, considered by Edward Gibbon writing in the eighteenth century as the happiest time of human history.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(8) MERRIE ENGLAND

 

Perhaps more mythic than historic – “a conception of English society and culture based on an idyllic pastoral way of life that was allegedly prevalent in Early Modern Britain at some time between the Middle Ages and the onset of the Industrial Revolution”.

 

Or an “essential Englishness with nostalgic overtones”. Think William Wordsworth – or the Shire.

 

“A world that has never actually existed, a visionary, mythical landscape, where it is difficult to take normal historical bearings.”

 

On the other hand, the Elizabethan era is often proposed as the Golden Age of England, while the Victorian era is proposed as the Golden Age of Britain.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(9) GRAND SIECLE  / BELLE EPOQUE

 

One can’t propose the Golden Ages of England or Britain without proposing the Golden Ages of France – the Grand Siecle of the reigns of Louis XIII and Louis XIV, or the Belle Epoque of the Third Republic from 1871 to 1914, the latter period often extended to a golden Age of continental Europe or European civilization as a whole.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(10) HOLLYWOOD (AMERICAN CENTURY & AMERICAN DREAM)

 

Finally, what embodies the American golden age – the American Century and the American Dream – more than Hollywood?

 

There is also often proposed a Golden Age of Hollywood itself, from 1910 to 1969 or so.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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