Sought shelter from the inclemency of heaven.
Those houses then were caves or homely sheds,
With twining osiers fenced, and moss their beds.
Then ploughs for seed the fruitful furrows broke,
And oxen labored first beneath the yoke.

Then followed the Brazen Age, which was an epoch of war and
violence.

To this came next in course the BRAZEN AGE;
A warlike offspring, prompt to bloody rage,
Not impious yet.

According to He'siod, the next age is the Heroic, in which the
world began to aspire toward better things; but OVID omits this
altogether, and gives, as the fourth and last, the Iron Age, also
called the Plutonian Age, full of all sorts of hardships and
wickedness. His description of it is as follows:

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 hollowed did the waves sustain,
Ere ships in triumph plough'd the watery plain.
Then landmarks limited to each his right;
For all before was common as the light.
Nor was the ground alone required to bear