Ages of the World. In his Works and Days, the early Greek poet Hesiod enumerates five ages of man: the Age of Gold, of Silver, of Bronze, of Heroes, and of Iron. The Roman writer Ovid speaks of only four ages, discounting the Age of Heroes. The Golden Age was the period when Cronus (Saturn) ruled the sky and men were as gods, without toil or troubles. During the Silver Age, the immortal gods of Olympus were the rulers of the heavens; in this period men became impious and arrogant and were destroyed by Zeus (Jupiter). Zeus then created the Bronze Age, in which men became violent and warlike, destroyed themselves, and disappeared into Hades. After that came the Heroic Age, according to Hesiod, when Zeus created a race of men who were more godlike and just; this was the age of the Trojan and Theban wars. The poet describes these men as demigods, the forerunners of the human race. Finally, there was the Iron Age, the era in which Hesiod places himself and his fellows. Characterizing it as an age when men toil ceaselessly, dishonor their parents, and fight among themselves, the poet predicts that Zeus will destroy this race as well. These subjects are favorite postclassical themes, especially in the fine arts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Illustrations of the Golden Age have been by far the most popular, often equated with an Eden-like state of nature. Classical Sources. Hesiod, Works and Days 106—201. Virgil, Eclogue 4; Georgies 2.532—40. Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.89— ijo. Statius, Silvae. further Reference. Harty Levin, The Myth of the Golden Age in the Renaissance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969). E. H. Gombrich, “Renaissance and the Golden Age,” in Norm and Form: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance (London, 1966). Roy Walker, The Golden Feast: A Perennial Theme in Poetry (New York: Macmillan, 1952). H. C. Baldry, “Who Invented the Golden Age?” Classical Quarterly 46 (1952): 83—92. See also Arcadia; Cronus; Deucalion and Pyrrha.