tious measurer marked out with his lengthened boundary.

And not only was the rich soil required to furnish corn and due
sustenance, but men even descended into the entrails of the Earth; and
riches were dug up, the incentives to vice, which the Earth had hidden,
and had removed to the Stygian shades.[32] Then destructive iron came
forth, and gold, more destructive than iron; then War came forth, that
fights through the means of both,[33] and that brandishes in his
blood-stained hands the clattering arms. Men live by rapine; the guest
is not safe from his entertainer, nor the father-in-law from the
son-in-law; good feeling, too, between brothers is a rarity. The husband
is eager for the death of the wife, she {for that} of her husband.
Horrible stepmothers {then} mingle the ghastly wolfsbane; the son
prematurely makes inquiry[34] into the years of his father. Piety lies
vanquished, and the virgin Astraea[35] is the last of the heavenly
{Deities} to abandon the Earth, {now} drenched in slaughter.

[Footnote 30: _Age of degenerated tendencies._--Ver. 128. 'Vena'
signifies among other things, a vein or track of metal as it lies
in the mine. Literally, 'venae pejoris' signifies 'of inferior
metal.']

[Footnote 31: _Now as ships bounded._--Ver. 134. 'Insultavere
carinae.' This line is translated by Clarke, 'The keel-pieces
bounced over unknown waves.']

[Footnote 32: _To the Stygian shades._--Ver. 139. That is, in deep
caverns, and towards the centre of the earth; for Styx was feigned
to be a river of the Infernal Regions, situate in the depths of
the earth.]

[Footnote 33: _Through the means of both._--Ver. 142. Gold forms,
perhaps, more properly the sinews of war than iron. The history of
Philip of Macedon gives a proof of this, as he conquered Greece
more by bribes than the sword, and used to say, that he deemed no
fortress impregnable, where there was a gate large enough to admit
a camel laden with gold.]

[Footnote 34: _Prematurely makes inquiry._--Ver. 148. Namely, by
inquiring of the magicians and astrologers, that by their skill in
casting nativities, they might inform them the time when their
parents were likely to die, and to leave them their property.]

[Footnote 35: _Astraea._--Ver. 150. She was the daughter of Astraeus
and Aurora, or of Jupiter and Themis, and was the Goddess of
Justice. On leaving the earth,