Hesiod was a Greek poet about 800 B. C. It is uncertain whether Hesiod should be regarded as a poet next in age to Homer, or whether the name best represents a school of versifiers about the foot of Mt. Helicon. At all events, certain relics of poetry remain, notably Works and Days, in which the degeneracy of modern, that is to say, Hesiod's time is deplored.
Five distinct ages in the downfall of man are recognized. First a Golden Age of patriarchal simplicity, during which peace and fruitfulness prevailed without labor, and spring was eternal. This age was governed by Cronus. Then came a Silver Age, a lawless age governed by Zeus, during which the year was first divided into seasons, and man was obliged to forsake his ease for sowing and reaping, and the surface of the earth was divided into private fields. In the Brazen Age, or reign of Poseidon, war and violence prevailed. The Heroic Age was the age of the Homeric traditions, the siege of Troy, the wanderings of Ulysses, and of great doings at Thebes. Ares reigned among the gods during the Heroic Age. The last, or Iron Age, in which Hesiod supposed himself to live, was an age in which justice and purity had fled the earth. Hades, the Roman Pluto, was in charge of this age. The times were so degenerate, vice so rampant, that any change at all could not fail to be for the better. Thus we see that despondent writers who depict the downfall of society are not confined to the twentieth-one century. Greek writers called Hesiod the poet of the helots; Homer, the poet of warriors.
