The Ages of Man are the stages of human existence on the Earth according to Greek mythology. Two classical authors (Hesiod and Ovid) in particular offer accounts of the successive ages of mankind, 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.
Read more about Ages Of Man: Hesiod's Five Ages, Ovid's Four Ages, Historicity of The Ages
Famous quotes containing the words ages of, ages and/or man:
“Ages when custom is unsettled are necessarily ages of prophecy. The moralist cannot teach what is revealed; he must reveal what can be taught. He has to seek insight rather than to preach.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“As yesterday and the historical ages are past, as the work of today is present, so some flitting perspectives and demi-experiences of the life that is in nature are in time veritably future, or rather outside of time, perennial, young, divine, in the wind and rain which never die.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Yes, I do think that you might pardon him,
And neither heaven nor man grieve at the mercy.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)