Silver Age - Greek Myth

Greek Myth

The original silver age (Αργυρόν Γένος) was the second of the five "Ages of Man" described by the ancient poet Hesiod in his poem Works and Days, following the Golden age and preceding the Bronze age. These people lived for one hundred years as children without growing up, then suddenly aged and died. Zeus destroyed these people because of their impiety, in the Ogygian Deluge.

After Kronos was exiled, the world was ruled by Zeus. The Olympians made a second generation of men and the age was called silver because the race of man was less noble than the race of the Golden Age.

In the silver age Zeus reduced the spring, and reconstructed the year into four seasons, so that men for the first time sought the shelter of houses and had to labor to supply their food.

The first seeds of grain were placed in the ground since now man had to gather their own food. A child grew up at his mother's side a hundred years, but adulthood lasted a short time. Being less noble than the Golden Age, humanity could not keep from fighting with one another, nor would they properly honor and or serve the immortals. The actions of the second generation infuriated Zeus, so in punishment he destroyed them.

Read more about this topic:  Silver Age

Famous quotes containing the words greek and/or myth:

    I am not a Catholic; but I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots in Greek thought and in the course of the centuries has nourished all of our European civilization, as something that one cannot renounce without becoming degraded.
    Simone Weil (1909–1943)

    ... if, as women, we accept a philosophy of history that asserts that women are by definition assimilated into the male universal, that we can understand our past through a male lens—if we are unaware that women even have a history—we live our lives similarly unanchored, drifting in response to a veering wind of myth and bias.
    Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)