Concept
Ages of Man
Overview
The Ages of Man are the historical stages of human existence according to Greek mythology and its subsequent Roman interpretation.
Both Hesiod and Ovid offered accounts of the successive ages of humanity, 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, yet increasing hardness.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Philosophers who discussed Ages of Man
Related ideas
- Hesiod
- Human condition
- Cratylus (dialogue)
- Plato
- Greek mythology
- Socrates
- Works and Days
- Golden Age
- War
- Zeus
- Islamic Golden Age
- Ovid
- Jupiter (god)
- Greeks
- Tang dynasty
- Han dynasty
- Ancient Rome
- History of China
- Agriculture
- Thebes, Greece
- Metamorphoses
- Greek Heroic Age
- Daimon
Place in the tradition
Part of Philosophy of history.