Ancient text
Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica
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The Greek poet who told the gods' family tree, and described five ages of humankind, from a golden race down to our age of iron. Start with the Theogony, then Works and Days.
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Why we can share it: Project Gutenberg record: 'Copyright Status: Public domain in the USA.' Translator Hugh G. Evelyn-White (1884-1924) died 1924; the introduction in the text is dated 9 September 1914.
Read the story behind it
TextHesiod's five races of menAround 700 BCE, Hesiod wrote that the gods made humanity five times, from gold down to iron, and ours is the iron race. The silver people stayed children for a hundred years before a short, foolish adulthood. What happened to the earlier races, and what does Hesiod say comes next for us?PlaceTartarusHesiod measured the Greek prison for defeated gods with a falling bronze anvil: nine days from sky to earth, nine more to reach it. Centuries later, 2 Peter used the same word for where fallen angels are chained. Why would a Greek pit show up in the New Testament? The page follows the trail.BeingTalosA giant of bronze circled Crete three times a day hurling rocks at ships. His whole body was armored except one blood-red vein running neck to ankle, sealed by a single nail. Ancient tales say Medea brought him down. Was Talos a monster, or one of the first imagined robots? Historians disagree.
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