In Hesiod’s sequence of human ages, the Silver Age follows the Golden Age. The sequence appears in Works and Days and describes a progressive decline from an idealized first age toward the harsh Iron Age.
Hesiod’s Silver Age humans remain children for a very long time and are portrayed as immature and disrespectful toward the gods. Zeus eventually destroys them, and they become the blessed dead beneath the earth in the poem’s account. Their condition contrasts with the effortless abundance associated with the Golden Age.
The traditional sequence then moves through the Bronze Age, the Heroic Age, and the Iron Age. The Heroic Age is unusual because it interrupts the pattern of decline: it includes famous heroes connected with wars such as those at Thebes and Troy.
This ages-of-humanity story is related to Pandora because Hesiod places Pandora’s arrival and the spread of human troubles within his explanation of why people must work and suffer. The two passages are neighboring parts of the same worldview.