The first utopian visions are myths that look back to an idealized past of the human race or to a time beyond death when life will be free from suffering. Variously called golden age tales, earthly paradises, Arcadias, fortunate isles and isles of the blest, they are the simplest visions of social organization.
These simple tales focus mainly on freedom from the ills of the human condition. It is a freedom granted by a god or gods, not one earned through human effort. The lands these tales depict are peopled with heroes, favored mortals, ancestors, noble savages, and other archetypal figures, the most significant of which are male.
All these effortless utopias share similar characteristics. The land is abundant and requires no tilling or work; the inhabitants are blessed with good health and either long lives with easy deaths or immortality; there is harmony among all the inhabitants as well as harmony between the mortals and the gods or God; and there is no animosity between the other creatures of the earth and human beings. Life is simple and easy.
Ancient Greek and Roman Utopian Visions
Perhaps the earliest of the golden age myths is the work of the eighth-century B.C. poet Hesiod. In Works and Days, Hesiod envisioned a golden age of man in the time of Cronos, a time when men “lived like gods…undarkened by sufferings,” when the fruitful earth unstintingly bore unforced her plenty.”
These images of a life of no labor and a land of plenty are echoed in Vergil’s Eclogue of the first century B.C. “Every land shall bear all fruits,” he wrote, and “The Earth shall not feel the harrough nor the vine the pruning-hook.” Indeed in Vergil’s vision, the ram and the lamb effortlessly and of their own volition change the color of their wool, releasing men from all laborious effort.
The Roman poet Ovid (43 B.C. – A.D. 17?) presents another such vision in his Metamorphosis. Desisting from all striving, here “The peoples of the world, untroubled by any fears, enjoyed a leisurely and peaceful existence.” And again no labor is required for “The earth itself without compulsion, untouched by the hoe…produced things spontaneously.”
Utopia Christianized in the Garden of Eden
These ancient visions of utopia sound very familiar to most Westerners for they inform the best-known utopian vision in the West, that of the Garden of Eden in Genesis. The main characteristics are all here, from a benevolent God providing for all needs to a kind and abundant nature offering up her plenty.
One departure, however, is the depiction of man’s relationship with the other creatures of the earth. Rather than a connection of perfect harmony, man now has “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth.” And of course, in this tale, utopia does not last.
From the Utopian Garden to the Distant Isle
The happy land of another Roman poet of this time, Horace (65-8 B.C.) follows in the same mode except that now the location changes from a garden to an island. In one of his odes, an “island of the blest” is described where, yet again “the earth is not plowed but yearly it yields the grain.” Here vines flourish, honey drips, flocks come running with full udders, and disease is unknown.
Fifteen hundred years in the future, the island scenario will resurface full force when Thomas More’s Utopia becomes the prototype of the modern utopian novel.
Reference: Gregory Claeys and Lyman Tower Sargent, The Utopia Reader, New York University Press, 1999.
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