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 Astræa[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, ‘venæ pejoris’ signifies ‘of inferior metal.’]
[Footnote 31: _Now as ships bounded._--Ver. 134. ‘Insultavere carinæ.’ 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: _Astræa._--Ver. 150. She was the daughter of Astræus and Aurora, or of Jupiter and Themis, and was the Goddess of Justice. On leaving the earth, she was supposed to have taken her place among the stars as the Constellation of the Virgin.]