The Age following the Silver Age and the Golden Age. The people of this Age indulged in savage warfare, but not yet vicious, that was the harsh Iron Age. Truth, shame, and honor vanished and in their place came fraud, deceit and trickery. The land, before common to all, was marked out by wary surveyors. They brought up the wealth from the bowels of the earth, which incited men to crime. Harmful iron appeared, and war came. Piety was dead, and Astraea, the Titaness of justice and the last of the immortals to walk the earth, abandoned it and took up her abode among the stars.
- Ovid. Metamorphoses i, 125 ff.