The Ages of Gold, Silver, Brass, and Iron. See Ovid, Metamorphoses I .

See also Don Quixote’s discourse to the goatherds, inspired by the acorns they gave him. Book II Chap. 3; and Tasso’s Ode to the Golden Age, in the Aminta . ↩

The Tears of Time, forming the infernal rivers that flow into Cocytus.

Milton, Paradise Lost , II 577:⁠—