The ancient assignment of the ages of the world to corresponding metals is first attested in Hesiod (around 700 BCE). On this model, the golden age was a period when life was idyllic, with no disease, war, or hard labor, and the ensuing silver, bronze, and iron ages represented a steady deterioration of social and moral conditions. In the first century BCE, Virgil celebrated the time of Augustus as the beginning of a new golden age in his fourth Eclogue (Bucolica). Most later characterizati…