Golden age

Use in the book

Socrates says that, apart from Hippias’ final three years, the Athenians lived nearly as in the reign of Cronus. The comparison makes Hipparchus’ death mark the end of a remarkably blessed condition. It is part of a praise narrative whose immediate purpose is to establish Hipparchus as a good and wise authority, not an independently demonstrated economic description of archaic Athens.

The qualification “nearly” is important. Socrates does not literally identify the historical period with the divine reign. The comparison draws on a familiar image of ease and abundance without asserting that Athenians became deathless, ceased working or enjoyed every feature of a mythic race. The surviving account in Hesiod places the golden race under Cronus and portrays a life free from ordinary toil and misery. That gives the comparison its positive force.

Political memory also uses such comparisons selectively. The supplied edition notes that the Aristotelian Constitution applies the Cronian description to Pisistratus’ own tyranny and contrasts that period with harsher rule under his sons. Here the favourable period extends through Hipparchus’ life. The shared image therefore does not guarantee agreement over which rulers deserve it or when the decline occurred.

The comparison interacts suggestively with the dialogue’s concern about gain. A life of abundant good things would seem to reduce the pressure of scarcity, yet Socrates’ argument says all people desire what is good, not merely people deprived of it. The passage does not develop an economic model of the golden age, and it should not be made to prove that avarice was absent from Hipparchus’ Athens. Its demonstrable role is commemorative: the authority whose precept Socrates invokes is placed within an idealised civic past.

Places to read

1. 229bἐγγύς τι ἔζων Ἀθηναῖοι — The Athenians’ manner of living is compared only approximately with the mythic age.
2. 229bὥσπερ ἐπὶ Κρόνου βασιλεύοντος — Cronus’ reign supplies the favourable standard.

Translation in this edition

The edition uses “nearly as in the reign of Cronus,” avoiding stronger claims such as “exactly” or “very nearly.” Its note juxtaposes Hesiod’s mythic background with the Constitution’s different political application. Those are two functions of the allusion: one explains the image, the other warns against treating its use as historical agreement.

Use in the book

B1282 identifies the community first through absence: Ares and Battle-Din are not gods among its members, nor are Zeus as king, Cronos, and Poseidon; Cypris is queen. The verses then describe a worship that uses images, scents, incense, and honey. Bulls' blood does not soak the altar, and killing to eat limbs is treated as the greatest pollution. B130 adds beasts and birds that are gentle toward humans, with kindliness blazing. Together these fragments portray a peaceful relation between human and nonhuman life.

The portrait is not simply secular innocence. Divine authority and deliberate ritual remain, but their forms do not involve the slaughter condemned elsewhere. Nor is this a foodless or bodiless state like the fully unified Sphere: it has people, animals, offerings, and an altar. That distinction makes it hazardous to identify the scene outright with the cosmic extreme of Love.

The fragments do not provide a date, named country, institutional constitution, or preserved transition out of this condition. Their narrative “among them” points to a lost antecedent. The introductory label helps gather the ethical picture, but should leave its exact place within cosmic history open.

Places to read

1. B 128.1–102Cypris reigns over a community whose offerings are bloodless and whose altar excludes slaughter.
2. B 130Beasts and birds are gentle toward humans, and kindliness flourishes.
3. Introduction V (editorial discussion)The modern introduction gathers these passages under the term golden age.

Translation in this edition

The chapter's printed order does not prove that B1282, B130, and B129 were consecutive in the original poem. “Golden age” is a navigational heading, not an exact Empedoclean quotation.