To classify Ovid as one of the elegiac successors in Latin litterateur irradiance, after Callimachus, Virgil or Lucretius would be an erroneous interpretation, since critic James Henry, someone who had entirely analysed Virgil’s Aeneid has said that Ovid was in his own terms, “'a more natural, more genial, more cordial, more imaginative, more playful poet... than [Virgil] or any other Latin poet.”

Publius Ovidius Naso, better known by the abbreviation ‘Ovid’ and popularly through his work entitled “Metamorphoses” was a Latin poet who lived during the times of Augustus, the Roman Emperor who had banished him towards Tiempo, a small island on the Black Sea, which he himself had termed as a ‘carmen et error’ or "a poem and a mistake".

The Metamorphoses, written during the term of his exile at Tiempo, is, in Ovid’s own words, his ‘magnum opus’. This myth-historical poem, comprised of 11,995 lines, 15 books and over 250 myths, commences with the poet’s narration of the creation of the world and ends with the deification of Dictator Gaius Julius Caesar, the champion king of the plebeians and the patricians alike!

Although today, the Metamorphoses is widely considered to be one of the most extravagant sources of the two hundred and fifty mythological tales he has retold, Ovid had his own philosophy in penning down the narrative.

An awe striking philosophical revelation in poetry is found in his ‘Ages of Mankind’, the second poetic verse by Ovid, after he expresses his thoughts on creation, one that unanimously precedes what Ovid calls the various stages that earth has gone through till today! To be precise, he narrates them in a way that seems to be chronological or what we call as, ‘one after the other’.

He begins this poem not by simply blabbering about various ages that he thought could have existed but by introducing a reader to the epoch he considers Golden! Golden, in his words, is not what material gold is referred to as. Rather, it is by his philosophical orbs that is suited to be a golden age or an age that is deemed to be called golden. 

“Golden was that first age which unconstrained, 

With heart and soul, obedient to no law,

 Gave honour to good faith and righteousness...”

Ovid considers this age to have been the very early one when humans had just been born on the face of this earth! He describes virtues like ‘faith’ and ‘righteousness’ that are his ideals of an age as such, if that ever really existed. Who knows, perhaps it is another of Plato’s Kallipolis? 

Later, he elaborates that this age is one of freedom where man is ‘obedient to no law’, an age when there are ‘no penalties engraved on plates of bronze’ and so on!

Forging ahead, a reader gets the impression that the division of the ages as done by Ovid are based on the political conditions present thence and not a geographical evolutionary division.

To grasp this, it would be befitting to call in the ‘Silver’ age, the ‘Bronze’ age and the ‘Iron’ age. It is to be found that there is ostensibly very less that Ovid has talked about the Silver or the Bronze Age, his only depictions of them, as found in the translation by A.D. Melville, respectively being:

i. “Then men sought shelter—shelter under caves 

And thickets and rough hurdles bound with bark; 

Then in long furrows first were set the seeds 

Of grain and oxen groaned beneath the yoke.”

ii. “Third in succession came the race of bronze, 

Of fiercer temperament, more readily 

Disposed to war, yet free from wickedness.”

Ovid seems to judge the quality of an age or an era, comparing it with the lustre of a metal. Since gold appears to be the most precious and lustrous of all metals, he uses ‘golden’ for the era that was tranquil, virtuous and serene. Succeeding gold, when Jupiter came to rule the skies and the Titans fell, he calls it the ‘silver’ epoch. Next in succession is the ‘tawny bronze’ which he has described in two simple statements that highlight how he sees the ages as those that are determined by wickedness and cruelty. Since, iron is the least precious of the four, it is when mankind is at the climax. 

Comparing this with Sanskritic Classics, as an illustration, these ages are found to be called, “Satya yuga, Treta yuga, Dwapar yuga and Kali Yuga” and the basis of the division is again, how wicked human beings transmogrify themselves at the end of each age!

Throughout this verse, Ovid also brings about a class differentiation that has, in his philosophy, evolved across the ages. During the golden and the silver aeons, all humans were considered equal and lived on treetops, inside caves and whatever places they could afford to dwell in. There was neither pride among some, nor inferiority towards others! But, as time passed by and groups warred against each other for survival, they came to have their own leaders, men who loved each member of his group or tribe and would even give up his life protecting them, though equally hating their opponents. Thus, in political terms, this phase can be truly adjudged as a transition from being united in all diversities to diversification in unity! 

A common thing to be noted in all of these depictions and ages by the poet is however, that these are his own presumptions and opinions of what these four delineated ages might have looked like and how and in what specific terms, humanity might have evolved and become what it has, in his days!

Nevertheless, with regards to what Ovid calls the wickedness of the Iron Age (the last of his philosophical creations of ages), it is best elaborated by the manner Jupiter, the king of Gods (in Greek terms, called Zeus) reacts to his own creations,

 “Rightly the knife is used lest the disease 

Spread and infection draw what still is sound.”