89Golden was the first age to be sown, which with no avenger, of its own accord, without law, cherished good faith and right. 91Punishment and fear were absent, no threatening words were read on fixed bronze, no suppliant crowd feared the face of its judge, but they were safe without an avenger. 94Not yet had the pine, felled on its mountains, come down into the flowing waves to visit a foreign world, and mortals knew no shores but their own. 97Not yet did steep ditches surround the towns; 98there was no trumpet of straight brass, no horns of curved brass, no helmets, no sword: without the use of soldiers the peoples, free from care, passed their days in gentle ease.
101the earth herself too, untaxed, untouched by the hoe and wounded by no ploughshares, gave all things of herself; 103and content with foods produced with no one compelling, they gathered the fruit of the arbutus and mountain strawberries and cornel cherries and blackberries clinging to the tough brambles, and acorns that had fallen from Jupiter's spreading tree. 107Spring was everlasting, and gentle zephyrs with warm breezes caressed flowers born without seed. 109Soon too the unploughed earth bore crops, and the field, never renewed, grew white with heavy ears of grain; 111now rivers of milk, now rivers of nectar flowed, and golden honey dripped from the green holm-oak. 113After Saturn had been sent to gloomy Tartarus and the world was under Jupiter, the silver race came in, worse than gold, more precious than tawny bronze.
116Jupiter shortened the time of the old spring, and through winters and summers and uneven autumns and brief spring completed the year in four seasons. 119Then for the first time the air glowed white, scorched with dry heat, and ice hung, bound fast by the winds. 121Then for the first time men went into houses (their houses were caves and dense thickets and twigs bound together with bark). 123Then for the first time the seeds of Ceres were buried in long furrows, and bullocks groaned, weighed down by the yoke. 125Third after that came the bronze race, more savage in nature and readier for dreadful arms, yet not wicked. 127The last is of hard iron.
128At once every crime burst into the age of baser metal: shame fled, and truth and good faith; 130into their place came frauds and tricks and plots and violence and the wicked love of possessing. 132The sailor spread his sails to the winds (nor did he yet know them well); 133and the keels that had long stood on the high mountains leapt over unknown waves, and the careful surveyor marked out with a long boundary the ground that had once been common, like the light of the sun and the breezes. 137Nor was the rich soil asked only for crops and the food it owed, but men went into the bowels of the earth: the wealth she had hidden away and moved close to the Stygian shades is dug up, an incitement to evils.
141And now harmful iron had come forth, and gold more harmful than iron: war comes forth, which fights with both, and shakes clashing arms with bloody hand. 144Men live by plunder: guest is not safe from host, nor father-in-law from son-in-law; 145even between brothers kindness is rare. 146The husband is bent on the death of his wife, she on that of her husband; 147terrible stepmothers mix lurid aconite; 148the son inquires into his father's years before their time. 149Piety lies vanquished, and the maiden Astraea, last of the heavenly ones, left the lands dripping with slaughter. 151And so that the lofty aether should be no safer than the earth, they say the Giants aimed at the kingdom of heaven and piled up mountains to the high stars.
154Then the almighty father hurled his thunderbolt and shattered Olympus, and struck Pelion off Ossa beneath it. 156When the dreadful bodies lay crushed under their own mass, they say that Earth, drenched with the abundant blood of her sons, grew wet and gave life to the warm gore, and, so that some memorial of her stock might remain, turned it into the shape of men. 160But that offspring too was contemptuous of the gods, most greedy for savage slaughter, and violent: you would know they were born of blood.