[Footnote: His eadem sunt omnia semper (iii.

945) is the constant refrain of Marcus Aurelius.] Indeed, it might be said that in the mentality of the ancient Greeks there was a strain which would have rendered them indisposed to take such an idea seriously, if it had been propounded.

No period of their history could be described as an age of optimism.

They were never, by their achievements in art or literature, in mathematics or philosophy, exalted into self-complacency or lured into setting high hopes on human capacity.

Man has resourcefulness to meet everything--[words in Greek],--they did not go further than that.
This instinctive pessimism of the Greeks had a religious tinge which perhaps even the Epicureans found it hard entirely to expunge.