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But with this exception and interval, the ages tend to the worse. Now conies the iron age, corrupt, unrestful, and toilsome; wherein, in strong contrast to the silver age, which enjoyed a hundred years of childhood and youth, premature senility is an index of physical degeneracy:—

"With this race, Hesiod goes on to tell us, family ties, the sanctity of oaths, and the plighted faith, are dead letters. Might is right. Lynch-lawyers get the upper hand. All is "violence, oppression, and sword law," and

yet, as this iron age, at the transition point of which Hesiod's own lot is cast, shades off into a lower and worse generation, the lowest depth will at length be reached, and baseness, corruption, crooked ways and words, will supplant all nobler impulses,