The first men, who were contemporaries of Cronus, enjoyed complete happiness. It was the Golden Age. Hesiod says: 'They lived like gods, free from worry and fatigue; old age did not afflict them; they rejoiced in continual festivity.' Their lot did not include immortality, but at least 'they died as though overcome by sweet slumber. All the blessings of the wrold were theirs; the fruitful earth gave forth its treasures unbidden. At their death, men of the Golden Age became benovolent genii, 'protectors and tutelary guardians of the living'.
After the Golden Age came the Silver Age, during which lived a race of feeble and inept men who obeyed their mothers all their lives (i.e. it was a matriarchal age). They were agriculturalists, Hesiod says.
The men of the Bronze Age were robust as ash trees and delighted only in oaths and warlike exploits. 'Their pitiless hearts were as hard as steel; their might was untameable, their arms invincible.' They ended by mutually cutting each other's throats. From this generation, however, dated the discovery of the first metals and the first attempts at civilisation.
After the Bronze Age Hesiod places the Heroic Age, peopled by the valiant warriors who fought before Thebes and under the walls of Troy. But the more widespread opinion was that after the Bronze Age came the Iron Age, the contemporary age, a period of misery and crime 'when men respect neither their vows, nor justice, nor virtue'.