The Five Ages of Man

Also called: Ages of Man, Golden Age

A legend handed down over the centuries.

A Greek myth told in Hesiod’s Works and Days. Mankind declined from the Golden Age under Cronus through the ages of silver, bronze and the heroes to the hard Iron Age in which Hesiod himself lived.

This Greek myth is told in Hesiod’s Works and Days. The golden race of Cronus’ time lived like gods, free from care; the earth bore fruit of its own accord, and they never grew old but died as if falling asleep. The silver race that followed stayed children for a long time and, once grown, wronged one another and would not honour the gods, so Zeus destroyed them. The bronze race delighted in war with bronze weapons and killed one another, going down to the underworld.

Next came the race of heroes who fought at Thebes and Troy, more just than those before; some of them live on in the Isles of the Blessed at the ends of the earth. Last is the iron race, Hesiod’s own, which he laments: toil and sorrow never cease by day or night, and justice is fading away. The four ages of gold, silver, bronze and iron, without the heroes, passed into the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses and gave us the phrase “golden age”.