For they had their eyes fixed on the lot of the individual here and now, and their study of the history of humanity was strictly subordinate to this personal interest.

The value of their recognition of human progress in the past is conditioned by the general tenor and purpose of their theory of life.

It was simply one item in their demonstration that man owed nothing to supernatural intervention and had nothing to fear from supernatural powers.

It is however no accident that the school of thought which struck on a path that might have led to the idea of Progress was the most uncompromising enemy of superstition that Greece produced.
It might be thought that the establishment of Roman rule and order in a large part of the known world, and the civilising of barbarian peoples, could not fail to have opened to the imagination of some of those who reflected on it in the days of Virgil or of Seneca, a vista into the future.

But there was no change in the conditions of life likely to suggest a brighter view of human existence.