The Heroic Age
The Heroic Age was the time just before our own. This race of men was called Henitheoi and was, like the Bronze race, made by Zeus. The men of this age were more heroic than their predecessors and successors. They were the demigods, but many were destroyed by the great wars of Greek legend. After death, some went to the Underworld; others to the Islands of the Blessed ones.
(ll. 156-169b) But when earth had covered this generation also, Zeus the son of Cronos made yet another, the fourth, upon the fruitful earth, which was nobler and more righteous, a god-like race of hero-men who are called demi-gods, the race before our own, throughout the boundless earth. Grim war and dread battle destroyed a part of them, some in the land of Cadmus at seven-gated Thebe when they fought for the flocks of Oedipus, and some, when it had brought them in ships over the great sea gulf to Troy for rich-haired Helen's sake: there death's end enshrouded a part of them. But to the others father Zeus the son of Cronos gave a living and an abode apart from men, and made them dwell at the ends of earth. And they live untouched by sorrow in the islands of the blessed along the shore of deep swirling Ocean, happy heroes for whom the grain-giving earth bears honey-sweet fruit flourishing thrice a year, far from the deathless gods, and Cronos rules over them, for the father of men and gods released him from his bonds. And these last equally have honour and glory.
Hesiod Works and Days
Print Source: Early Greek Myth, by Timothy Ganz.
Next: Iron Age
Introduction to Greek Mythology
- Myth in Daily Life
- What Is Myth?
- Myths vs. Legends
- Gods in the Heroic Age - Bible vs. Biblos
- Creation Stories
- Uranos' Revenge
- Titanomachy
- Olympian Gods and Goddesses
- Five Ages of Man
- Philemon and Baucis
- Prometheus
- Trojan War
- Bulfinch Mythology
- Myths and Legends
- Golden Fleece and the Tanglewood Tales, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
