Ages of Man

The Ages of Man are the successive races of mortals in Greek and Roman tradition, each less happy than the one before. Hesiod, in the Works and Days, describes five: gold, silver, bronze, the heroes and iron. The Roman poet Ovid, in the Metamorphoses, gives four: gold, silver, bronze and iron. Hesiod calls them “races” (genē); “ages” is the usual English word.

Hesiod’s Five Ages

Hesiod tells the story to his brother Perses as a second tale, after the story of Pandora, of how gods and mortal men came from the same source (Works and Days 106–201). The gods who live on Olympus made the first two races; Zeus made the third and the fourth.

The Golden Age

The golden race lived in the time of Cronos, when he was king in heaven. They lived like gods, without sorrow or toil, did not grow wretched with age, and feasted in peace. When they died it was as if overcome by sleep, and the earth bore them fruit of its own accord, in plenty. After the earth covered this race, they became pure spirits (daimones) living on the earth, guardians of mortal men, who roam everywhere clothed in mist, watch over judgments and cruel deeds, and give wealth (Works and Days 109–126).

The Silver Age

The second race was of silver, much worse than the golden and like it neither in body nor in mind. A child was brought up for a hundred years at its mother’s side, an utter simpleton, playing in the house. When they reached full growth they lived only a short time, in distress because of their folly; they could not keep from wronging one another, and would not serve the immortals or sacrifice on their altars. Zeus, angry that they gave no honour to the blessed gods, “hid them away”. Hesiod does not say how. After the earth covered them they are called the “blessed ones under the earth”, second in rank but still honoured (Works and Days 127–142).

The Bronze Age

Zeus made the third race of bronze, from ash trees, terrible and strong, unlike the silver in every way. They cared only for the grievous works of Ares and for violence. They ate no bread, and their hearts were hard as adamant. Their weapons, houses and tools were of bronze, since there was no black iron. They were destroyed by their own hands and went down to the dank house of Hades without a name (Works and Days 143–155). In Hesiod, then, the bronze men die in war with one another. He says nothing of a flood. Apollodorus has a separate tradition: Zeus wished to destroy the men of the Bronze Age, and Deucalion and Pyrrha survived the flood in a chest (Library 1.7.2).

The Heroic Age

Hesiod inserts a fourth race that is not a metal: a godlike race of hero-men, more righteous and better than the bronze, called demigods, “the race before our own”. War and battle destroyed some of them, at seven-gated Thebes when they fought over the flocks of Oedipus, and at Troy for the sake of Helen. To the others Zeus gave a life and a home apart from men at the ends of the earth. They dwell with untroubled hearts in the Islands of the Blessed by deep-swirling Ocean, where the earth bears honey-sweet fruit three times a year; a line found in some texts of the poem adds that Cronos is their king (Works and Days 156–173, 169).

The Iron Age

Hesiod says he wishes he had not been born among the fifth race, but either died before it or been born afterwards, for this is a race of iron. Men never rest from toil and misery by day or from perishing by night, and the gods give them harsh cares, although some good is mixed with the evil. Zeus will destroy this race too, when children are born grey at the temples. In that age father will be unlike his children, guest unlike host, friend unlike friend, and brother not dear as before. Children will dishonour aged parents, men will sack one another’s cities, and the oath-keeper, the just and the good will have no favour. Then Aidos (Shame) and Nemesis (Indignation), with their fair bodies wrapped in white robes, will leave the wide-wayed earth for Olympus and the company of the immortals, and only grievous pains will be left for mortal men (Works and Days 174–201).

Ovid’s Four Ages

Ovid tells of the Ages after the creation of the world and of man, in the first book of the Metamorphoses. He has no heroic age and no flood between the ages: the flood of Deucalion comes later in the same book as the punishment of the iron race (Metamorphoses 1.89–150, 1.253–312).

The Golden Age

The golden age arose first, a race that of its own accord, with no avenger and no law, cherished good faith and right. There was no punishment or fear, no threatening words on bronze tablets. No pine had yet come down from its mountain to the waves to visit foreign lands; men knew only their own shores. There were no ditches around towns, no trumpets, no helmets or swords. The earth gave everything without being ploughed. Spring was everlasting, and rivers ran with milk and nectar (Metamorphoses 1.89–112). So in Ovid the men of this age did not travel because ships did not yet exist, not because they were unable.

The Silver Age

After Saturn was sent down to dark Tartarus and the world was under Jupiter, the silver race came, worse than gold, more precious than yellow bronze. Jupiter shortened the old spring and divided the year into four seasons. Then, for the first time, men came to live in houses, since caves and thickets had been their homes, and the seeds of Ceres were sown in long furrows, and oxen groaned under the yoke (Metamorphoses 1.113–124).

The Bronze Age

The third race was of bronze, fiercer in character and readier for dreadful arms, “but not yet wicked” (Metamorphoses 1.125–127). So Ovid does not describe the bronze men as destroying each other, and the full evil of war starts in the iron age.

The Iron Age

The last race was of hard iron, and at once every kind of wickedness burst in. Shame, truth and faith fled, and in their place came fraud, trickery, plots, violence and the wicked love of gain. Sailors set sail, surveyors marked out the once-common land, and men dug into the earth for wealth, “the incentives to evil”. War followed, with iron and gold, and men lived by plunder. Guest was not safe from host, nor father-in-law from son-in-law; brothers rarely loved; wives and husbands plotted each other’s death; stepmothers mixed poison; sons inquired when their fathers would die. Piety lay conquered, and the virgin Astraea, the last of the heavenly ones, left the earth soaked with blood (Metamorphoses 1.128–150).