Page:Hesiod, and Theognis.djvu/48

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HESIOD.
For Jupiter, when he with brass the golden age alloyed,That blissful region set apart by the good to be enjoyed."—Theodore Martin, p. 242.

But with this exception and interval, the ages tend to the worse. Now conies the iron age, corrupt, unrestful, and toilsome; wherein, in strong contrast to the silver age, which enjoyed a hundred years of childhood and youth, premature senility is an index of physical degeneracy:—

"Scarcely they spring into the light of day,Ere age untimely shows their temples grey."—E. 237, 238.

"With this race, Hesiod goes on to tell us, family ties, the sanctity of oaths, and the plighted faith, are dead letters. Might is right. Lynch-lawyers get the upper hand. All is "violence, oppression, and sword law," and

"Though still the gods a weight of care bestow,And still some good is mingled with the woe,"

yet, as this iron age, at the transition point of which Hesiod's own lot is cast, shades off into a lower and worse generation, the lowest depth will at length be reached, and baseness, corruption, crooked ways and words, will supplant all nobler impulses,

"Till those fair forms, in snowy raiment bright,From the broad earth have winged their heavenward flightCalled to th' eternal synod of the skies,The virgins, Modesty and Justice, rise,And leave forsaken man to mourn belowThe weight of evil and the cureless woe."—E. 259-264.
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