the ensuing Ages – Ovid‏

by richibi

    The Silver Age - Lucas Cranach the Elder

                            “The Siver Age“  (c.1516)

                              Lucas Cranach the Elder

                                                     ________
 
 
 
it is interesting to note how profoundly Ovid‘s mythological
setting marked Christian notions of the Creation, which at
least in the West have held sway now for some nearly two
thousand years
 
it is a tale then twice told, the last time however with not
half even the first one’s contagious exuberance, I think  
 
I believe more in Ovid then, also in Cranach and da Cortona,
worthy indeed proponents of that earlier oracular deity 
 
 
Richard
 
                       ____________________
 
 
 
 
But when good Saturn, banish’d from above,
Was driv’n to Hell, the world was under Jove.
Succeeding times a silver age behold,
Excelling brass, but more excell’d by gold.
Then summer, autumn, winter did appear:
And spring was but a season of the year.
The sun his annual course obliquely made,
Good days contracted, and enlarg’d the bad.
Then air with sultry heats began to glow;
The wings of winds were clogg’d with ice and snow;
And shivering mortals, into houses driv’n,
Sought shelter from th’ inclemency of Heav’n.
Those houses, then, were caves, or homely sheds;
With twining oziers fenc’d; and moss their beds.
Then ploughs, for seed, the fruitful furrows broke,
And oxen labour’d first beneath the yoke.
 
 
To this came next in course, the brazen age:
A warlike offspring, prompt to bloody rage,
Not impious yet…
 
 
 
   The Age of Iron - Pietro da Cortona
 
                             “The Age of Iron”  (1637)
 
                                      Pietro da Cortona
 
                                            __________
                                     
 
  
Hard steel succeeded then:
And stubborn as the metal, were the men.
Truth, modesty, and shame, the world forsook:
Fraud, avarice, and force, their places took.
Then sails were spread, to every wind that blew.
Raw were the sailors, and the depths were new:
Trees, rudely hollow’d, did the waves sustain;
E’re ships in triumph plough’d the watry plain.

Then land-marks limited to each his right:
For all before was common as the light.
Nor was the ground alone requir’d to bear
Her annual income to the crooked share,
But greedy mortals, rummaging her store,
Digg’d from her entrails first the precious oar;
Which next to Hell, the prudent Gods had laid;
And that alluring ill, to sight display’d.
Thus cursed steel, and more accursed gold,
Gave mischief birth, and made that mischief bold:
And double death did wretched Man invade,
By steel assaulted, and by gold betray’d,
Now (brandish’d weapons glittering in their hands)
Mankind is broken loose from moral bands;
No rights of hospitality remain:
The guest, by him who harbour’d him, is slain,
The son-in-law pursues the father’s life;
The wife her husband murders, he the wife.
The step-dame poyson for the son prepares;
The son inquires into his father’s years.
Faith flies, and piety in exile mourns;
And justice, here opprest, to Heav’n returns.

 
                                               Ovid 
                                                                    
                                   (from “Metamorphoses“, Book I, in a translation by
                                   Sir Samuel Garth, John Dryden, Alexander Pope,
                                   Joseph Addison, William Congreve and other
                                   eminent hands)