The Exceptional Generation of Heroes

Between bronze and iron, Hesiod places a generation of heroic men described in divine or godlike terms. The interruption matters. The heroes are remembered as a distinct kind of generation within the poem's account of humanity.

They belong to the wars at Thebes and Troy. Their exceptional standing does not spare them destruction. Some are removed to the Isles of the Blessed, while the heroic world gives way to the age in which the poet lives.

The language identifies a special remembered generation. It does not give a complete biological definition of its members. To understand particular ancestry, we still have to turn to the individual stories and genealogies.

For this inquiry, the interest lies in the combination: extraordinary people, divine associations, famous wars, and the passing of an age. Hesiod preserves that combination clearly enough to invite comparison with the mighty men of old in Genesis, even while the meaning of divine ancestry remains to be examined.