rits in
Hades, watching over and {23} protecting those they had loved and left
behind on earth. The men of the Silver Age[7] were a long time growing up,
and during their childhood, which lasted a hundred years, they suffered
from ill-health and extreme debility. When they at last became men they
lived but a short time, for they would not abstain from mutual injury, nor
pay the service due to the gods, and were therefore banished to Hades.
There, unlike the beings of the Golden Age, they exercised no beneficent
supervision over the dear ones left behind, but wandered about as restless
spirits, always sighing for the lost pleasures they had enjoyed in life.

The men of the Brazen Age were quite a different race of beings, being as
strong and powerful as those of the Silver Age were weak and enervated.
Everything which surrounded them was of brass; their arms, their tools,
their dwellings, and all that they made. Their characters seem to have
resembled the metal in which they delighted; their minds and hearts were
hard, obdurate, and cruel. They led a life of strife and contention,
introduced into the world, which had hitherto known nothing but peace and
tranquillity, the scourge of war, and were in fact only happy when fighting
and quarrelling with each other. Hitherto Themis, the goddess of Justice,
had been living among mankind, but becoming disheartened at their evil
doings, she abandoned the earth, and winged her flight back to heaven. At
last the gods became so tired of their evil deeds and continual
dissensions, that they removed them from the face of the earth, and sent
them down to Hades to share the fate of their predecessors.

We now come to the men of the Iron Age. The earth, no longer teeming with
fruitfulness, only yielded her increase after much toil and labour. The
goddess of Justice having abandoned mankind, no influence remained
sufficiently powerful to preserve them from every kind of wickedness and
sin. This condition grew worse as time went on, until at last Zeus in his
anger let loose the water-courses from above, and drowned every {24}
individual of this evil race, except Deucalion and Pyrrha.

The theory of Hesiod,[8] the oldest of all the Greek poets, was that the
Titan Prometheus, the son of Iapetus, had formed man out of clay, and that
Athene had breathed a soul into him. Full of love for the beings he had
called into existence, Prometheus determined to elevate their minds and
improve their con