she was supposed to have taken her
place among the stars as the Constellation of the Virgin.]

EXPLANATION.

The Poet here informs us, that during the Golden Age, a perpetual
spring reigned on the earth, and that the division of the year into
seasons was not known until the Silver Age. This allusion to Eden is
very generally to be found in the works of the heathen poets. The
Silver Age is succeeded by the Brazen, and that is followed by the
Iron Age, which still continues. The meaning is, that man gradually
degenerated from his primeval innocence, and arrived at that state of
wickedness and impiety, of which the history of all ages, ancient and
modern, presents us with so many lamentable examples.

The limited nature of their views, and the fact that their exuberant
fancy was the source from which they derived many of their alleged
events, naturally betrayed the ancient writers into great
inconsistencies. For in the Golden Age of Saturn, we find wars waged,
and crimes committed. Saturn expelled his father, and seized his
throne; Jupiter, his son, treated Saturn as he had done his father
Uranus; and Jupiter, in his turn, had to wage war against the Giants,
in their attempt to dispossess him of the heavens.

FABLE V. [I.151-162]

The Giants having attempted to render themselves masters of heaven,
Jupiter buries them under the mountains which they have heaped
together to facilitate their assault; and the Earth, animating their
blood, forms out of it a cruel and fierce generation of men.

And that the lofty {realms of} aether might not be more safe than the
Earth, they say that the Giants aspired to the sovereignty of Heaven,
and piled the mountains, heaped together, even to the lofty stars. Then
the omnipotent Father, hurling his lightnings, broke through
Olympus,[36] and struck Ossa away from Pelion, that lay beneath it.
While the dreadful carcasses lay overwhelmed beneath their own
structure, they say that the Earth was wet, drenched with the plenteous
blood of her sons, and that she gave life to the warm gore; and that,
lest no memorial of this ruthless race should be surviving, she shaped
them into the form of men. But that generation, too, was a despiser of
the Gods above, and most greedy of ruthless slaughter, and full of
violence: you might see that they derived their origin from blood.

[Footnote 36: _Olympus._--Ver. 154. Olympus was a mountain between