Epic poetry contains evidence of historical consciousness (the perception of human change over time) in the distinctive characterization of three different temporal frames. Homer contrasts the generation of Trojan War heroes with both their antecedents in the epic plupast and their (merely) human descendants who comprise the poet’s audience. Hesiod too in his Myth of Races articulates a tripartite division of human history, chartacterized by diachronic decline, in his Bronze, Heroic, and Iron generations. Both poets emphasize but do not explain the disjunction between the human present and the heroic past. The greater generational continuity that is characteristic of the Histories is reflected in Herodotus’ portrayal of heroes as liminal figures who bridge the gap between the remote and the recent past – like Orestes, whose super-sized skeleton befits his semi-divine status, but also plays a crucial causal role in Sparta’s rise to Peloponnesian power in the sixth century.