The six ages of the world
A scheme handed down from Augustine, in which history was divided into six ages, the sixth running from the birth of Christ to the end of the world.
O Happy People of the Future
Petrarch, Letters on Familiar Matters 8.7, edited by Giuseppe Fracassetti (1859) · 1349
Id pudori meo gravius insultat, quod iam annus integer, iamque alterius bona pars abiit, ex quo nihil viro dignum, non dicam facere, sed ne loqui quidem contigit, tonante undique ac fulminante ferociter fortuna. Qua in re benigno sub iudice forsan excuser, si ad examen venerit, illud quoque non leve aliquid, sed millesimum trecentesimum quadragesimum octavum sextae aetatis annum esse, quem lugeo, qui non solum nos amicis sed mundum omnem gentibus spoliavit. Cui si quid defuit, sequens ecce annus illius reliquias demetit, et quidquid illi procellae superfuerat, mortifera falce prosequitur.
What wounds my pride most is this. A whole year has gone, and a good part of another, in which I have not managed to do anything worthy of a man, or even to say anything, while fortune thundered and struck like lightning on every side. A kind judge might perhaps excuse me, if it came to a hearing. For this is no small thing either: it is the year 1348 of the sixth age that I mourn. It robbed not only us of our friends but the whole world of its peoples. And if it left anything undone, look, the following year is reaping what was left. Whatever survived that storm, it hunts down with its deadly sickle.