Hesiod was a Greek poet. He was regularly thought He wrote many poems including The Theogony, in which he tells us he tells of the genealogy of the Greek gods.  Another great poem he wrote was Works and Days, in which he try’s to persuade his brother Perses to share the land which their father had given him after he died. In this poem it has two parts. The first part gives him advice on ethical instruction on the way humans should live their lives. The second part gives him advice on how humans should practically live. In this poem by Hesiod, the purpose of it was to persuade Perses into sharing the land with him. However, Hesiod included his view of “mankind’s past and future” in this poem.

Hesiod tells us through his poem that there were five ages of humankind. First, there was the golden age. It was a perfect world, man stayed young and did not grow up, and man lived like gods. Second, there was the silver age. Man had to work. However, man did not grow up until they were one hundred years old. Third, there was the bronze age. In this age, everything was made of bronze. The animals, the food, the plants, even the people! Fourth, there were the demigods. The demigods were a race of hero men. Not quite gods, yet, not quite man. Fifth, was the iron age. Hesiod tells us that the iron age is the era that we humans live in now. As we can see, the iron age is the lowest out of all the ages. He also tells us that the iron age is doomed. He says that in the future Zeus, the king of the gods, will ultimately destroy us forever.

Despite this tragic event that Hesiod thought would take place, he still said that man should still pray to and rely on Zeus to help them (weird). Hesiod is telling us that, being man, we should live our lives in justice and hard work. However, at death, it is over. The future for mankind has death written all over it.

According to Hesiod, in order to live a good life until death comes, you need to pray and listen to Zeus and live our lives according to how he wants us to live our lives. If a person does not do this, and worse, does not even ask Zeus for how his life shall be lived or something that Zeus really does not like at all, Zeus shall inflict on him terrible sanctions. However, if a person asks Zeus for help, and lives his life accordingly, he shall attain rewards from Zeus. If a man is able to please Zeus and make him happy by doing what he said, then you can attain short term rewards from him on earth. But in the future of mankind, there is only death and darkness for everyone on this earth, and Zeus is basically that darkness and death.