We may trace, I think, in this quintuple succession of earthly races, set forth by the author of the “Works and Days,” the confluence of two veins of sentiment, not consistent one with the other, yet both coëxisting in the author’s mind. The drift of his poem is thoroughly didactic and ethical: though deeply penetrated with the injustice and suffering which darken the face of human life, he nevertheless strives to maintain, both in himself and in others, a conviction that on the whole the just and laborious man will come off well,[153] and he enforces in considerable detail the lessons of practical prudence and virtue. This ethical sentiment, which dictates his appreciation of the present, also guides his imagination as to the past. It is pleasing to him to bridge over the chasm between the gods and degenerate man, by the supposition of previous races,—the first altogether pure, the second worse than the first, and the third still worse than the second; and to show further how the first race passed by gentle death-sleep into glorious immortality; how the second race was sufficiently wicked to drive Zeus to bury them in the under-world, yet still leaving them a certain measure of honor; while the third was so desperately violent as to perish by its own animosities, without either name or honor of any kind. The conception of the golden race passing after death into good guardian dæmons, which some suppose to have been derived from a comparison with oriental angels, presents itself to the poet partly as approximating this race to the gods, partly as a means of constituting a triple gradation of post-obituary existence, proportioned to the character of each race whilst alive. The denominations of gold and silver, given to the first two races, justify themselves, like those given by Simonidês of Amorgos and by Phokylidês to the different characters of women, derived from the dog, the bee, the mare, the ass, and other animals; and the epithet of brazen is specially explained by reference to the material which the pugnacious third race so plentifully employed for their arms and other implements.
[153] There are some lines, in which he appears to believe that, under the present wicked and treacherous rulers, it is not the interest of any man to be just (Opp. Di. 270):—