AGES, a term employed to designate the epochs of civilization in the history of the human race. The old poets and philosophers described these in harmony with what they conceived to have been the moral and political condition of their ancestors. The idea of a succession of A. presented itself at a very early period to the Greek mind. The life of the race was likened to that of the individual—hence the infancy of the former might easily be imagined to be, like that of the latter, the most beautiful and serene of all. Hesiod mentions 5 A.—the golden, simple and patriarchal; the silver, voluptuous and godless; the brazen, warlike, wild and violent; the heroic. an aspiration towards the better; the iron, in which justice, piety and faithfulness had vanished from the earth. the time in which Hesiod fancied that he himself lived. Ovid closely imitates the old Greek except in one particular—he omits the heroic age. This idea, at first perhaps a mere poetic comparison, gradually worked its way into prose, and finally became a por tion of scientific philosophy. These A. were regarded as the divisions of the great world year, which would be completed when the stars and planets had performed a revolution round the heavens, after which destiny would repeat itself,itia the same series of events.
Thus mythology was brought into connection with astronomy. The golden A. was said
to be governed by Saturn; the silver, by Jupiter; the brazen, by Neptune; and the iron. by Pluto. Many curious calculations were entered into by ancient writers to ascertain the length of the heavenly year, and its various divisions. The greatest discrepancy prevailed, as might naturally be expected: some maintaining that it was 3000, and others as many as 18,000 solar years. The Sybilline books compared it to the seasons of the solar year, calling the golden age the spring, etc. ; and on the completion of the cycle, the old order was renewed. The idea of a succession of A. is so natural, that it has inwrought itself into the religious convictions of almost all nations. It is sanctioned by scripture, for it is symbolically adopted in the Apocalypse to a certain extent; it also manifests itself in the sacred books of the Indians. Modern philosophy, at least in Ger many and France, has also attempted to divide human history into definite A. or periods. Fichte numbers five, of which he conceives that we arc in the third; Hegel and August Comte reckon three, placing us in the last. Fortunately, the course of history is not arrested by such speculations, but proceeds in quiet indifference to all metaphysical dogmatism.