If you want me to, I can outline the other half
of this story, the origins of human males.
I can tell it well, because I know what I’m talking about.
Can you train your mind on this?
Do you know how gods and mortal men
came to inhabit the same universe?
In the beginning, the golden age of men came first.
They were given language. Thus were
they made human, by the immortals
who have palaces on Olympus. [110]
These men lived in the time of Cronus,
when he had become king over the Sky.
These men lived like gods,
because their competitive spirit was untroubled,
untouched by work and woe.
None of the decay that belongs to
old age assailed them.
Their arms and legs stayed the same always.
All they did was take pleasure in festivities.
No evil was in sight anywhere. [115]
When they died,
it was simply like falling asleep. Nothing ignoble
marked their lives. The land, always fruitful,
never ceased from producing a harvest
effortlessly, without work. With plenty everywhere,
no envy was provoked. All their
tasks they performed voluntarily,
leisure distributed equally among the noble citizenry.
From their wealth, they gave many animals,
dear to the blessed gods in sacrifice. [120]
But the golden age still died, being mortal not divine.
And after the Earth received them,
they became bodiless Angels (daimones).
These are the noble Angels we talk about
who roam above the ground. Warding off evil,
they are the watchers over mortal humans.
They keep close watch
over legal disputes and merciless deeds.
Clothed in nothing but air,
they stalk the land everywhere. [125]
They can make you wealthy.
As nobles, they have this royal prerogative.
The second age came after,
and it was much worse.
This silver age of men was made by the immortals
who have palaces on Olympus.
Neither in body nor mind
did they resemble the golden age.
For one hundred years,
each child stayed with its mother. [130]
For one hundred years, she had to raise it,
fussing over it at home, a big dumb child.
Then when it passed puberty,
that measure of youthful prime,
it didn’t live much longer.
Sufferings were brought on
because of their deeply ingrained,
habitually adolescent stupidity. Reckless violence
could not be restrained between them.
As for service to the immortals, [135]
they were unwilling to give it.
They offered no sacrifice on the altars of the blessed.
But sacred law decrees that humans offer sacrifice,
as is our custom. Therefore Zeus,
the son of Cronus, in a just anger, made them disappear.
They refused to give honors
to the blessed gods who hold Olympus.
And for that reason they had to die.
So the silver age passed away.
And after the Earth received them, [140]
they were called by mortals the Blessed Ones,
our name for those under the ground.
They may have come second,
but nonetheless honor still attends them.
Father Zeus then made the third age of humans,
the creatures to whom he gives language.
This bronze age of men
he made completely different from the silver age.
From the ash tree, the spear is made.
So too was the bronze age, terrible and mighty. [145]
They cared for nothing but grievous deeds of War (Ares)
and lawless violence. No bread
did they eat: farming was not for them.
Their competitive spirit, although steel-willed,
was completely uncivilized.
Their mighty power made their hands invincible.
Backing up their fists were thick arms
growing from their shoulders like tree trunks.
At war, they used bronze armaments.
At leisure, they rested in houses of bronze. [150]
Their only occupation was working with bronze.
Iron was unknown and didn’t exist yet.
But bronze conquered bronze.
Killed off by their own hands,
they journeyed down into Hades’ wide embrace,
cold and dark. What do we call them?
Nobody remembers their names.
Formerly their fists pounded out their fame. But then
dark death throttled them,
and so they departed from the sunny spotlight. [155]
So the bronze age passed away.
But after the Earth received them,
there was then still another. A fourth age of men,
who turned instead to agriculture,
was made by Zeus, son of Cronus.
Superior to the bronze age, they were more just.
This was the divine age of heroic men.
These heroes, from their parentage, we call
the Demigods. Their age came just before ours,
before we overran boundless Earth. [160]
Some of these heroes died
in evil war and horrible combat.
Some died at seven-gated Thebes,
Cadmus’ portion of the Earth,
destroyed by the fighting
over Oedipus’ flocks.
Others died when by ships
they had crossed over the great gulf of seawater
to Troy, to fight for Helen
and her beautiful hair. [165]
It was there that the finality of death
wrapped itself around some of them.
But for half of the heroic humans,
sufficient livelihood, and a place to live, was given to
them by the Zeusfather, the son of Cronus,
when he settled them at the ends of the Earth.
With their competitive spirit untroubled,
they dwell there [170]
on the Isles of the Blessed,
beachfront to deep-eddying Ocean.
They are the blessed heroes.
For them, honey-sweet fruit
the fertile soil yields in harvest
three times a year.
Then yet another age, the fifth age of Men,
was established by Zeus,
that long-term thinker.
I wish that I did not live among the fifth age of Men.
Better to have died before,
or to be born after. [175]
This is now the iron age.
Neither in daytime,
nor at nighttime,
does pain and distress ever cease
wearing us down.
The gods have given us difficult things that consume our care.
But even so, for this age,
noble things will be mixed in with the bad.
Still, Zeus will destroy this age of humans,
the creatures to whom he gives language, [180]
if ever at birth they show gray around the temples.
But we are not born wise. His plan is:
Fathers do not agree with sons.
Sons do not agree with fathers.
Neither does a foreigner with a local.
Nor does one pupil with another pupil.
And siblings shall always be rivals.
(Only once were they not, back in the golden age.)
They shall always be quick
to dishonor their aging parents. [185]
They shall always find fault with them,
speaking painful words.
Do these fools not know about
the retribution of the gods? Is that why they do not
make repayment to their aging parents
for bringing them up?
Justice for them is nothing but the fist.
And so one man destroys another man’s city.
The man keeping his oath shall never be thanked.
No thanks for the just man, [190]
no thanks for the good man.
Better to be doers of evil deeds and lawless violence.
Such men shall always be praised by men.
But if justice lies in the fist, then shameless
is what they shall always be.
The evil man will harm the better man,
speaking his twisted stories,
which he will then seal with an oath.
Every wretched human being,
envy accompanies. [195]
Bringing discord,
bringing glee over misfortune,
bringing dirty looks,
envy accompanies.
Envy sends off to Olympus,
away from the wide-pathed ground,
the goddesses whose beautiful skin
is veiled in white robes.
Envy makes them abandon humans,
to seek instead the company of immortals.
Envy drives out Reverence (Aidos)
and Righteous Anger (Nemesis). Left behind are [200]
the toilsome troubles that mar mortal humans.
Without the goddesses, evil is unchecked.