Which age do we live in, according to Hesiod?

Question

There are five ages of man according to Hesiod: Golden Age, Silver, Bronze, Iron, and Age of Heroes.

Which one are we currently in as of today?

Answer 1

Hesiod describes the Five Ages in his poem Works and Days (lines 109 - 201) ¹. Their order is:

• Golden Age, ruled by Cronus,
• Silver Age, when Zeus rule begins,
• Bronze Age, an age of tough men that ends with the flood of Deucalion,
• Heroic Age, when the Trojan War occurs,
• Iron Age, the current age.

Hesiod does not mention a future age past his own, which would be a better fit for our own time. Therefore, we could either say that we live in the same age as Hesiod, the Iron one, or that we live in an age past the five Hesiodic ones.

_{¹ An English translation of the poem is available in the Perseus Digital Library: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3atext%3a1999.01.0132}