go unpunished, or allow innocence to succumb to fraud.
And yet, the poet goes on to argue, the times in which he lives are out of joint. Such men as his brother prosper in an age which in wickedness distances its precursors. His lot, he laments, is cast in the fifth age of the world; and here he takes occasion to introduce the episode of the five ages of the world, and of the increase of corruption as each succeeds the other. In this episode, which Mr Paley considers to bear a more than accidental resemblance to the Mosaic writings, the golden age comes first—those happy times under Cronos or Saturn, when there was neither care nor trouble nor labour, but life was a blameless holiday spent in gathering self-sown fruits; and death, unheralded by decay or old age, coming to men even as a sleep, was the very ideal of an Euthanasia:—
Rich in earth's fruits, and of the blest beloved,
They sank in death, as opiate slumber stole
Soft o'er the sense, and whelmed the willing soul.
Theirs was each good—the grain-exuberant soil
Poured its full harvest uncompelled by toil:
The virtuous many dwelt in common blest,
And all unenvying shared what all in peace possessed."
—E. 155-162.
It was with sin, in Hesiod's view as in that of the author of the Book of Genesis, that death, deserving the name, came into the world. As for the golden race, when earth in the fulness of time closed upon it, they became dæmons or genii, angelic beings invisibly
