The myth of the Golden Age is a pervasive one in classical literature. And the Augustan age is often called the Golden Age. However, it was a highly differentiated concept at Augustus` own time. The notion was evolving during his reign. The myth of the Golden Age in the Augustan age was based on previous traditions that led to new adaptation and departure. It is Virgil that played an important role in the new adaptation and departure. The purpose of this article is to examine notions and innovations of the Golden Age in Virgil`s works and what function the innovation served in favor of the reign of Augustus. 1. "The Return" of the Golden Age in the Fourth Eclogue In this poem Virgil is faithful to the literary traditions. The myth of life under Kronos as developed out of Hesiod is continued by Virgil in the Eclogue. Besides the Greco-Roman tradition, Virgil draws much of his language and mood from an exotic context. Then, Where does the originality of the Eclogue lie? The poem`s central innovation lies in the notion of "a return" of the age of Saturn. Essentially, Virgil gives expression in this poem to an optimistic vision that is formally opposed to the archaic, pessimistic tale of the Five Ages as it existed in Hesiod`s Works and Days. the poem is, no doubt, an evocative expression of the yearning for peace and tranquility after decades of civil wars. But, with no complete assurance as yet that civil wars will come to an end. In the fourth Eclogue, where Virgil expresses his hopes for the future, he uses the imagery of the mythical Golden Age to produce a poem which seems irrelevant to the actual historical circumstances. This compounded, abstract landscape serves to disguise and attenuate some of the more abrasive political realities. 2. The Golden Age Based on Labor in the Georgics The Georgics are very different in tone from the Eclogues. Written at the suggestion of Maecenas and opening with an invocation of Octavian, the poem shows that the author has ceased to speak in allegories and has come out into the open politically. It shows too that he has moved from Arcadia into a world closer to reality. One of the most significant changes in the Golden Age concept in the Georgics is that the Golden Age comes to connote the result of labor rather than a paradisiac state of indolence. In Virgil`s version in the Georgics, as in the Eclogues, the age of Saturn is a time when the earth bore all things freely. But the age of Saturn that existed before Jupiter, unlike the Golden Age in the Eclogues, is shown not to be a desirable ideal. Furthermore, at the conclusion of Book 2, farming is the life of the Golden Age. In the first Georgics having asserted communal ownership and lack of work as marks of the age of Saturn, Virgil, in the second Georgics, exalts the hard-working life of the peasant as the true Golden life. Virgil`s view of work in the Georgics closely parallels his attitude to warfare. Both are necessary as a means of realizing the ideal. We make war only to have peace; the same applies to the agrarian warfare of cultivation. 3. Saturn as Civilizer and Legislator in the Aeneid A further reinterpretation of the same golden-age myth is to be found in the Aeneid. Here we find a striking departure from the version of the Eclogues. Now there is an era of savagery preceding the Golden Age and the latter comes after, not before, the development of civilization. The new version fits in with the theme of the Aeneid, which is the foundation of a state, and with the hope of a golden age to be reborn with Augustus. What is more, to make Rome the sole home of the Ancient Golden Age and the natural starting-point of the New, Virgil had Saturn escape to Latium and become a king there. The story was created for the specific demands of the Aeneid, in order to establish a quasi-historical link between Rome, the Latin kings and Augustus . on one hand and Saturn and the Golden Age on the other. Augustus is heir to the king of