- It’s exceedingly unlikely: not because it’s implausible that the author of Daniel knew Greek (not that there’s any evidence of that that I know of, just that it isn’t intrinsically implausible), but because the Hesiodic version is itself a borrowing from older models from the general region of the Levant and Mesopotamia. It’s enormously simpler to imagine the ages = metals trope as a piece of common Levant-Mesopotamian heritage, which found its way from there into both Daniel and Hesiod, than as something that was borrowed by a specific Text A from a specific Text B.
- Hesiod is the earliest detailed account of the trope that we get, to be sure. The most detailed later ones are in Daniel, the Zoroastrian Avesta, and there’s maybe an echo in the Mahabharata (eras associated with colours, not metals). But we do get partial appearances of the trope in much earlier texts: the Sumerian An = Anum god list, and the Lagash king list. The latter, ca. 18th cent. BCE, describes the period just after the Flood as follows (tr. J. A. Black):
- In those days a child spent a hundred years in [?nappies?], spent a hundred years in his rearing. He was not made to perform (any) assigned tasks. He was small, he was feeble/stupid, he was [with] his mother.