The Iron Age has two lives in my research. For archaeologists it is a period of tools and weapons; for the ancient poets it is the last and worst of the ages of mankind. These are the pages where both meet.
The last of the four ages
On Ovid’s Four Ages Ovid closes his sequence of ages with iron:
And last of all the ruthless and hard Age of Iron prevailed, from which malignant vein great evil sprung; and modesty and faith and truth took flight, and in their stead deceits and snares and frauds and violence and wicked love of gain, succeeded.
Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.127-130, Brookes More, Boston, Cornhill Publishing Co., 1922
On The world before the Great Flood the Greek decline from the Golden Age to the Iron Age sits beside other flood traditions. On The Kings of Atlantis become the Gods of the Greeks Donnelly quotes Socrates in Plato’s Cratylus explaining that Hesiod meant good and noble men by his golden race, and that Hesiod says we are of the age of iron.
Iron before the flood
On The antiquity of some of our great inventions Donnelly notes that the Greek legends spoke of an Age of Iron, as well as an Age of Bronze, before the submergence of the great race their gods reigned over. On The Bronze Age in Europe he argues that the Romans, Greeks, Etruscans and Phoenicians flourished in the Iron Age, so the earlier bronze commerce must have come from somewhere else.
The archaeological ages
On Three Ages of European Development the Iron Age is the period when iron became the main material for tools and weapons. On The structure of the Stone-, Bronze- and Iron Age, is used by archaeologists and historians I look at how that scheme came about. On The Churches: control religion and spiritual development a passage the page quotes from A Hypnotist’s Journey to Avalon says that when men first learned to use iron for weapons, it brought a lot of destruction to our ancestors.
Related pages
- Ovid’s Four Ages
- The world before the Great Flood
- The Kings of Atlantis become the Gods of the Greeks
- The antiquity of some of our great inventions
- The Bronze Age in Europe
- Three Ages of European Development
- The structure of the Stone-, Bronze- and Iron Age, is used by archaeologists and historians
- The Churches: control religion and spiritual development
For every page I tagged with Iron Age, see the Iron Age tag archive.
