¹ I employ the formula ‘golden race’ in most instances, in preference to the more familiar ‘golden age’, the better to preserve the genetic element in the terms γνος, gens, saeculum/saecula and aetas.

² Zanker 167. See the review by Wallace-Hadrill, A., ‘Rome's Cultural Revolution’, JRS 79 (1989), 157–64.Google Scholar

³ Zanker 167–72. The rubrics are different in the original German edition (Augustus unddie Macht der Bilder [Munich, 1987], 171)—the introductory paragraph has no rubric to itself, and the section on the Ludi Saeculares is preceded by the rubric ‘AUREA AETAS’, for which Shapiro substitutes ‘The Golden Age Is Proclaimed’–but the implications for the Ludi Saeculares and the Carmen Saeculare are the same. Horace's commission is attested in Suetonius'Vita Horati and also in the Acta of the Augustan Ludi Saeculares (149), most accessibly presented with other documents relating to the Ludi Saeculares by Pighi 107–19:carmen composuit Q. Hor[ati]us Flaccus. See also Horace, Odes 4.6, which treats of the composition of the Carmen Saeculare, with Putnam 115–30.

⁴ Commager, S., The Odes of Horace, a Critical Study (New Haven, 1962), 223Google Scholar

⁵ Johnston 78–9.

⁶ Putnam 16.

⁷ Alföldi, A., ‘Der neue Weltenherrscher der vierten Ekloge Vergils’, Hermes 45 (1930), 369–84.Google Scholar Galinsky 193, n. 2, is right to describe Alföldi's assumption as ‘arguable’ but, having done so, need not himself find any reference specifically to the golden age in the statue of Augustus from Prima Porta.

⁸ Zanker 172–92.

⁹ Zosimus 2.5; Phlegon, πεμακροβων. The prophecy is published alongside related documents by Pighi 55–58, as are the Ada, CIL VI 32323.

¹⁰ See, for example, on Latin literature, Feeney, D.C., ‘Si licet etfas est: Ovid's Fasti and the Problem of Free Speech under the Principate’, in A., Powell (ed.), Roman Poetry and Propaganda in the Age of Augustus (Bristol, 1992), 1–25,Google Scholar and Kennedy, D.F., ‘“Augustan” and “anti-Augustan”: Reflections on Terms of Reference’, 26–58. On Roman art, seeGoogle ScholarEisner, J., ‘Cult and Sacrifice: Sacrifice on the Ara Pacis Augustae’, JRS 81 (1991), 50–61.Google Scholar

¹¹ Reckford, K.J., ‘Some Appearances of the Golden Age’, CJ 44 (1958), 79–87, at p. 79.Google Scholar

¹² Galinsky 193.

¹³ As has been shown in Vergil's case by Ryberg and Johnston. But Smolenaars, J.J.L., ‘Labour in the golden age: a unifying theme in Vergil's poems’, Mnemosyne 40 (1987), 391–405, argues—not entirely plausibly—that there is a greater degree of consistency in Vergil's treatment of the reign of Saturnus.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁴ For a list of passages, see Gatz 222–3.

¹⁵ On Hesiodic imagery in Vergil's Georgics, see Johnston passim

¹⁶ On the saecula and their length, see Pighi 3–25.

¹⁷ On the golden race in the fourth Eclogue, see especially Gatz 87–103.

¹⁸ Fraenkel 371–2 convincingly dismisses the possibility either that lucidum… decus should be taken with Diana alone or that Apollo and Sol are to be understood as separate deities.

¹⁹ That Lucina here is Diana and not, as frequently, Iuno, is suggested by tuns.

²⁰ See Fraenkel 373–5.

²¹ In which the song of the Parcae (323–81) repeats the refrain currite ducentes subtegmina, currite, fusi.

²² On the mythological history of Saturnus, see Johnston 62–89.

²³ To Johnston (48), the Georgics mark a shift in Vergil's conception of the ‘golden age’ ’from a time of mortal happiness based upon unlimited leisure to a time of satisfaction and joy achieved through thought and toil’. On the variations in the Vergilian treatment of the myth, see also Ryberg, and Galinsky 194.

²⁴ Georgics 2.136–76.I see no reason to take as definitive the stark reading of R.F. Thomas, Virgil, Georgics (2 vols., Cambridge, 1988), ad loc, that every deviation from the Hesiodic model implies an undermining of Italy's claim to be the Saturnia tellus.

²⁵ Aratus, Phaenomena 96–136; Hesiod, Works and Days 197–201.

²⁶ Cf.Dilke, O.A.W. (Horace: Epistles, Book I, London, 1954), ad loc:Google Scholar ‘Fructibus: not only “produce” but “revenues”, all that comes in money or kind out of the estates.’ See also Wickham, E.C. (Horace, the Odes, Carmen Saeculare and Epodes, Oxford, 1891), ad loc: ‘There is probably a play on “fructibus …frueris.”’;Google Scholar

²⁷ I disagree with Dilke (op. cit.) ad loc, for whom ‘there is probably no reference here, as most commentators think, to the river Pactolus, turned to gold by Midas’. Readers might well think of the Midas story here, as well as of the various sources of alluvial gold which were famous in antiquity.Préaux, J. (Q. Horatius Flaccus, Epistulae, Liber Primus, Paris, 1968), ad loc, sees different allusions: ‘inauret: subtile allusion à l'abaissement de Phraate, cite ailleurs pour ses richesses royales, et à l'âge d'or qui approche…’.Google Scholar

²⁸ Not, as Wickham (op. cit.) and Morris, E.P. (Horace: Satires and Epistles, 1939, repr.Oklahoma, 1968), ad loc., would have it, merely a successful harvest. See also Preaux (op. cit.), ad 1. 1: ‘fructibus: par cette mise en relief, soulignée par frueris et copia au v.2, H. prepare la conclusion de son épître aureafruges…Copia cornu.’ However, Preaux follows Wickham in his failure to associate the negative aspects of goldenness at the beginning of the Epistle with the goldenness of Copia at the end. Both draw an association between aurea Copia and the golden race, but neither interprets the association as deleterious to the golden race.Google Scholar

²⁹ Noted, for example, by West, D., ‘Horace's Poetic Technique in the Odes’, in C.D.N., Costa (ed.), Horace (London, 1973), 49: ‘This dazzling oxymoron has been too successful. We are too familiar with it to realize how provocative it is, and how it fits the argument. Mediocrity is drab. In calling it golden, Horace is differentiating it from the squalor of poverty (obsoleti sordibus tecti), and also from the rich man's palace (invidenda aula). It is the mean that is truly golden, not the golden gewgaws of the wealthy.’Google Scholar

³⁰ Pace Baldry 87.

* Since this article was written—and, in the latter case, since its going to press—two new discussions of the golden age have appeared, in David Castriota's The Ara Pads Augustae and the Imagery of Abundance in Later Greek and Early Roman Imperial Art (Princeton, 1995), 124–44, and in Karl Galinsky's Augustan Culture (Princeton, 1996), 90–121. Of the two authors, Galinsky treats material closer to my own, and I concur with much of his argument—on the error of seeing the fourth Eclogue as a ‘seminal text of the Augustan era proper’ (91), on the importance of gold (treated briefly, 97-9), and on the Carmen's ‘stop[ping] short of proclaiming a Golden Age, and especially a Golden Age of automatic bliss or felicity’ (102). On the other hand, Galinsky fails to treat the Carmen's complex engagements with other golden-age texts and is unwilling to admit of alternative readings of the hymn. Like Castriota's book, his is a thoughtful addition to the literature, but raises questions, not least about the extent to which poetry reflected or governed current moods at Rome, and to what extent those moods were themselves uniform or, in Galinsky's terminology, enjoyed a uniform ‘evolution’.