thumb|[[Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Golden Age|300px|right]]

The Ages of Man are the historical stages of human existence according to Greek mythology and its subsequent Roman interpretation.

Both Hesiod and Ovid offered accounts of the successive ages of humanity, which tend to progress from an original, long-gone age in which humans enjoyed a nearly divine existence to the current age of the writer, in which humans are beset by innumerable pains and evils. In the two accounts that survive from Ancient Greece and Rome, this degradation of the human condition over time is indicated symbolically with metals of successively decreasing value, yet increasing hardness.

Hesiod's Five Ages

Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Silver Age|thumb|upright

thumb|[[John Simon (engraver)|John Simon, The Brazen Age]]

[[Virgil Solis, The Iron Age|thumb]]

The Greek poet Hesiod (between 750 and 650 BC) outlined his Five Ages in his poem Works and Days (lines 109–201). His list is:

  • Golden Age – The Golden Age is the age that falls within the rule of Cronus. Created by the immortals who live on Olympus. Men did not suffer.

Commentary by other authors

Plato in Cratylus recounts the golden race of men who came first. In the dialog, Socrates clarifies to Hermogenes that Hesiod did not mean men literally made of gold, but good and noble. Socrates describes these men as spirits or daemons upon the Earth. Since δαίμονες (daimones) is derived from δαήμονες (daēmones, meaning knowing or wise), they are beneficent, preventing ills, and guardians of mortals. In constrast, in Eligies (circa 1st century BCE), Propertius equates the same flood with the end of the Golden Age.

Modern historical periodisation such as the three-age system has reappropriated the terms Bronze Age and Iron Age to describe archaeological periods following the Stone Age based on predominant metallurgical practices. Congruently, the term Golden Age is used to describe a civilization during a historical highpoint, for example the Golden Age of India, Islamic Golden Age and the Han and Tang dynasties of China.

See also

Similar concepts include:

  • Christian: Six Ages of the World, dispensationalism
  • Hindu: Yuga Cycle (Satya, Treta, Dvapara and Kali Yuga)
  • Buddhist: Three Ages
  • Jain: and
  • Aztec: Five Suns
  • Maya: Mesoamerican creation myths (generations of man)
  • Giambattista Vico's ricorso: the return of the society to a relatively more primitive condition
  • J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional "Four Ages"
  • Oswald Spengler's civilizational model
  • Modern archaeology: Three-age system (Stone, Bronze and Iron), with each of the stages further divided into substages (e.g. the Stone Age comprises the Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic).
  • : an artistic tradition that depicts the ages as a series of ascending and descending steps
  • Marx & Engels: modes of production

References

  • The Ages of Man at Greek Mythology Link
  • "Five Ages of Man in Greek Mythology According to Hesiod" by N.S. Gill
  • Hendrick Goltzius engravings of the Ages of Man from the De Verda collection"