Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/37

 Astronomy, and is represented with a celestial globe, to which she points with a little staff.

During the reign of Jupiter's father, Saturn, the God of Time, there was so much happiness in the world that it was called the "Golden Age." Hesiod mentions five ages-the Golden, simple and patriarchal; the Silver, voluptuous and godless; the Brazen, warlike, wild and violent; the Heroic, an aspiration toward the better; and the Iron, in which justice, piety, and faithfulness had vanished from the earth. Ovid omits the Heroic Age. The Golden Age was said to be governed by Saturn; the Silver, by Jupiter; the Brazen, by Neptune; and the Iron, by Pluto. An "Age" was regarded as a division of the great world year, which would be completed when the stars and planets had performed a revolution around the heavens, after which destiny would repeat itself in the same series of events. Thus mythology was brought into connection with astronomy. It was believed that successive conflagrations and deluges were designed by the gods to purify the earth from guilt, and that after each of these judgments man was again so regenerated as to live for a time in a state of virtue and happiness. During the Golden Age, the year was one continued springtime, and the earth, "as yet unwounded by the plowshare," produced of its own accord. This was followed by the Silver Age where spring was "but a season of the year" and the "wings of wind were clogged with ice and snow" driving shivering mortals into houses. Next came the Brazen Age, a "warlike offspring, prompt to bloody rage," and last of all the Iron Age when again—according to Dryden's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses—landmarks were set up "limiting to each his right," and not satisfied with the blessings of earth men greedily rummaged beneath the soil for the precious ore the gods had wisely hidden next to Tartarus. This ungrateful race was then destroyed by Jupiter, who sank their country and formed a new people to