ANCIENT CLASSICAL ALTERNATIVES AND APPROACHES TO THE IDEA OF PROGRESS
Tsanoff, Radoslav A Greek and Byzantine Studies; Jul 1, 1958; 1, 1; ProQuest pg. 81

ANCIENT CLASSICAL 
ALTERNATIVES AND 
APPROACHES TO 
THE IDEA 
OF PROGRESS* 

RADOSLA V A. TSANOFF 

T he Rice 111stitute 

T HE GREEKS DID NOT HAVE a historical view of the life of 
mankind as a progress of advancing achievement, realiza­

tion and expansion of values. Their greatest historian, Thucydi·­
des, did not contemplate the events of his time in their rhythm 
with the ongoing march of bygone ages. On his first page he 
tells us that his inquiries into remote antiquity and into his 
more recent past had not revealed to him anything «on a great 
scale, either in war or in other matters." Where does a Classical 
poet sing: "1, the heir of all the ages?" 

Shall we, then, follow the example of the chronicler who 
was content with the bare statement that there are no snakes in 
Iceland? But we shall be failing to realize the ancient Classical 
alternatives to the belief in progress, and also some significant 

*This article is the substance of an introductory chapter in a historical and system· 
atic study of the Belief in Progress. 



Greek and Byzantine Studies 

approaches to this idea. These contending views reveal impor­
tant characteristics of the Classical temper which any student 
of the modern ideas of progress should grasp and keep in mind. 

Before tracing some of the ancient Classical approaches to 
the idea of progress we should examine the Greek alternatives 
to it which in some measure persisted also in Roman thought. 
They are mainly two: the view of a series of world ages marked 
by an increasing degeneration, and the view of the cosmic 
process as eternal recurrence. The first of these ideas pervaded 
Greek mythology and persisted in the world outlook of some 
poets and philosophers. The second was a theory of cosmolog­
ical speculation, with disturbing inferences. 

It should be stated clearly at the outset that neither one 
of these two ideas commanded general acceptance. We cited the 
first page of Thucydides, but as we read beyond the first page 
we can follow his account of the rude early beginnings of the 
Greek tribes, unsettled in habitation and in customs, many of 
them pirates and lawless nomads. While he unrolls before us the 
tragic events of the Peloponnesian war, Thucydides is not 

marked by any nostalgia for bygone primitive glories. Even in 
her disaster his Athens could not lose the memories which he 
engraved in his version of Pericles' funeral oration. And he 
appealed to the undoubted judgment of posterity: uI have 
written my work ... as a possession for all time."l 

The issue between the doctrines of historical degeneration 
and eternal recurrence was not always drawn sharply. Both 

were held by many minds in ambiguous indecision. And along­
side of them there were also some approaches to the belief in 
progress. 

The view of a world series of periodic degeneration has 
been called the doctrine of cultural primitivism. In our time it 
has been studied by Professors Lovejoy and Boas with thorough 
analysis and the most extensive and detailed documentation 

lThucydides, HistoTY of the Pe/oponnesian WaT, 15, transl. Richard Crawley, 
Everyman's Library ed. 

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Ancient Approaches to the Idea of Progress 

across the entire range of Classical literature. T radi tion has 
called it the belief in a bygone Golden Age. Hesiod gave us an 
early version of it in his Works and Days. The deathless Olym­
pian gods made first of all «a golden race of mortal men 
who ... lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and 
free from toil and grief."~ The portrayal of their blessed light 
of existence is in sharp contrast to the series of lower and lower 
types of humanity which darkened the succeeding ages. Phys­
ically and mentally the men of the Silver Age were inferior to 
their predecessors. And down the scale of baser metals, the Age 
of Bronze and the Age of Iron marked the spreading degenera­
tion of mankind. 

The golden men lived in justice and joy and ease. Peaceful 

were their lives, and their death was as a gentle sleep. The silver 

men were slow-witted and insolent, without piety, so that they 

angered the gods, who did away with them. The brazen men 
were a race of terrible warriors, violent and hard of heart. They 

crushed and destroyed each other and without any abiding 

achievement sank into the chill muck of Hades. Ours is the age 

of the men of iron; in toil and grief we grind out our days; 
wrangling and trickery sully our home life and our dealings 

with each other. Neither justice nor reverence is to be found 

among us, but «envy, foul mouthed, delighting in evil."" 

Hesiod bewailed his lot, that he had to be born in the Age 
of Iron. He interrupted his account of the steady deterioration 
of the human stock by his chant of a great Age of Heroes, 
between the brazen and the iron men. Some of them were war­
like like the men of bronze and perished in dread battles; but 
others, nobler and more righteous, still live without grief or 
want in the Islands of the Blessed. Was Hesiod's heroic episode 
in the dismal tale of human degradation a hint of possible 
future hope of restoration, or was it a note of added dismay? 
Zeus the far-seeing that lets us live in the miserable iron age 

2Hesoid, Works and Days, 109ff., trans!. H. G. Evelyn-White, Loeb Classical 
Library ed. 

"Ibid., 195£. 

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might just as well have allowed us to be born in the heroic 
mould. 

The Golden Age doctrine persisted as an alternative view 
of the course of human existence in the thought of both 
philosophers and poets, but it was slanted differently in various 
cosmic outlooks. We may overlook minds of lesser note, for 
Plato and Vergil and Ovid claim our attention. Plato did not 
specifically favor a theory of golden primitive perfection fol­
lowed by a periodic series of increasing degeneration. He seems 
to have regarded the myth of the Golden Age, along with some 
of his own myths, as an imaginative version of a deep truth. 
The truth here seems to be this, that human well-being and 
perfection are directed by Divine guidance; but if or when 
God's hand is withdrawn, men left to themselves go astray, and 
the whole world reverts towards confusion and evil. This 
world-view, which we may call pendular, has kinships with the 
doctrine of eternal recurrence. It is also involved in Plato's 
approach to the abysmal problem of evil. That evil can in 
any way be attributed to God, Plato rejected emphatically as 
an impious error. God is the author of good and of good only. 
But there is in the constitution of the world a corrupt material 
strain, and in the very nature of things "there must always 
remain something which is antagonistic to good."-t<God 
desired that all things should be good and nothing bad, so far as 
this was attainable;" but left to our own devices, we men let 
our lower impulses prevail. 4 In this Platonic perspective of the­
odicy the myth of the Golden Age expressed deep significance. 

We noted the possible hint of hope in Hesiod's interposi­
tion of the Heroic Age between the Ages of Bronze and Iron. 
The legend of the Golden Age was given an optimistic turn in 
the prospect of its possible return, as in Vergil's Fourth Eclogue. 
This chant of divine restoration of mankind to a high estate 
was reinterpreted by Christian theologians in Messianic, Provi­
dential terms. A closer echo of Hesiod's myth in Roman poetry 
is found in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Ovid glorified especially the 

'Theaetetus. 176; TimaeuJ, 30; transl. Jowett. 

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Ancient Ap proacbes to the Idea of Progress 

primeval perfection of mankind: ((Golden was that first age, 
which, with no one to compel, without a law, of its own will, 
kept faith and did the right."" He also sang in Latin verse the 
old story of the several ages, but proceeding from the silver and 
the brazen directly to our age of hard iron, in which Hmodesty 
and truth and faith fled the earth, and in their place came tricks 
and plots and snares, violence and cursed love of gain."" 

The poetic vision of the return of the Golden Age was 
not only a vision of eventual restoration. It also mediated 
between the doctrine of cultural degeneration and the cyclic 
cosmology of eternal recurrence. This second doctrine finds 
many expressions throughout the entire course of Greek 
thought, from Heraclitus to Plotinus. Like a treadmill of 
cosmic spread and duration, the world process goes through 
the entire scale of possible conditions or events, and then 
returns to retrace its course to the least detail, aeon after aeon. 

The basic idea of eternal recurrence was not exclusively 
or originally Greek. Its various versions may be studied in Baby­
lonian, Brahmanic, and Buddhist cosmogonies. It stimulated 
the Oriental zeal for vastness and infinitude, of which Bud­
dhism provided the most overwhelming expressions. The 
Buddhist kal pas, or aeons of world-destruction and world­
restoration, were regarded as incalculable cosmic epochs, how 
incalculable, Buddhist speculation taxed its resources to con­
ceive or imagine. Are we informed that the monsoon rains of 
the Bay of Bengal discharge in some four months thirty to 
forty feet of flood? The Buddhist imagined a downpour of 
three years' duration; the total sum of raindrops would still 
come short of the number of years in an asankhyeya k.a/ pa. And 
these cosmic aeons return cyclically, marked by the alternate 
destruction and restoration of the world. Our folk tales begin 
with the familiar "once upon a time;" but the Buddhist legends 
were more expansive: "Ten quadrillion times a hundred quad­
rillions of k.alpas ago, there lived a righteous king." A dim 

sOvid, Metamorphoses, I: R9ff., transl. F. J. Miller, Loeb Classical Library cd. 

·;Ibid., lines 127ff. 

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recollection, and scarcely a faint hopel-yet Buddhist piety 
sought to sustain its serene prospect. Even though in this kalpa 
no lotus flower may appear on the primordial deep, and so no 
Buddha will come to teach men deliverance from misery, yet in 
some incredibly distant future, salvation and enlightenment will 
again return to wretched mankind. Even this brief passing 
mention of Oriental speculation may enable us to keep in mind 
the world-wide spread of the idea of eternal recurrence, as we 
consider more directly some of its Greek versions. 

In Pre-Socratic philosophy the world course of eternal 
recurrence was conceived in pendular and in cyclical terms. 
Heraclitus viewed nature as a process of endless change of con­
tending activities, as the opposition of upbuilding and down­
going, all things arising from cosmic fire are in due course con­
sumed by fire, worlds without end. Empedocles envisioned a 
similar counteraction of love and strife, or attraction and repul­
sion throughout the course of existence. But he seems to have 
entertained also a cyclical cosmogony and was a believer in the 
transmigration of souls. These two beliefs found strong support 
in the Pythagorean school. Pythagorean influence may be traced 
in Plato's advocacy of these doctrines, very definite in the case 
of transmigration, only occasional in the case of eternal recur­
rence. Aristotle also conceived of the course of existence in 
terms of circular motion, for it alone is continuous and in 
accord with his view of the world as eternal.' But while one 
could cite from Aristotle passages from which a cyclical doc­
trine could be surmised, he can scarcely be listed with the defi­
nite exponents of that belief. 

In Post-Aristotelian philosophy, eternal recurrence is 
entertained by the Epicurean poet Lucretius, finds its active 
advocates among the earlier Stoics, and is viewed by Plotinus 
in a mystical perspective. Lucretius saw in nature a mechanical 
scrambling and unscrambling of material particles; the world 
is composed of atoms-in-motion-in-space. Thus everything is 
an impermanent combination or cluster of atoms; and since 

'C/. Aristotle, De generat;one et cOTTuptione, 337a. 

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Ancient Approaches to the Idea of Progress 

the number of different combinations, no matter how vast, is 
yet exhaustible in eternity, there is bound to be recurrence and 
return, not only in general terms but in detail. To a truly 
cosmic survey, <tall things are always the same: eadenz sun! 
omnia semper."" 

The Stoic sages were more explicit. Reviving the Heracli­
tean belief in a Cosmic Fire, which they exalted as Directive 
Reason and as Deity, they conceived of nature as a tension and 
a contention of refining and coarsening processes of material 
existence. When a t long last a world epoch has gone through 
its round of possible conditions and events, it is all consumed 
in a cosmic conflagration, to start another world cycle recapit­
ulating its predecessors to the least detail. A new Socrates, like 
so many before him immemorially, again has his trials with his 
shrewish wife Xantippe and his trial at court and his final cup 
of hemlock. These doctrines of cosmic conflagration and eternal 
recurrence were held by the early Greek Stoics~ but they were 
abandoned by Panaetius, who introduced Stoicism into Rome; 
the Roman Stoics entertained not a cyclical but a linear view 
of the world process. 

The doctrines of recurrence and rebirth were revived in 
the closing period of ancient thought by the Neopythagoreans 
and the N eoplatonists. The greatest thinker of that age, 
Plotinus, introduced these ideas into his mystical cosmology of 
divine emanation. Plotinus believed that the spiritual essence of 
man's soul was not extinguished along with his bodily disinte­
gration. His assurance of personal immortality, like Plato's, was 
combined with a view of rebirth and transmigration of souls. 
In a larger cosmic setting, the repeated emanation of the Soul 
Principle in individual embodied souls was seen by Plotinus as 
an instance of the cyclical recapitulation of the vast cosmic 
process of Deity emanating in the three zones of existence: 
N ous or Rational Spirit, Soul, and Matter. The doctrine of 
Rational Divine Providence, which the Stoics fused subtly and 
strangely with their materialistic cosmology, was expressed by 

"'Lucretius, De rerum natura, III: 945. 

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Plotinus in unmistakably spiritual and religious terms. The ulti­
mate reality for him was God, emanating radiant perfection 
throughout the universe at different levels of being. 

The legend of the Golden Age and the mythology of 
world-degeneration yielded a dismal view, one excluding any 
historical advance. The doctrine of eternal recurrence in its var­
ious forms viewed the world process either as the cyclical reca­
pitulation of the forms of material existence, or as the periodic 
reenactment of the drama of Divine Providence. All of these 
ideas may be regarded as ancient alternatives to the belief in 
historical progress. But while this last belief cannot be con­
sidered as dominant in Classical thought, approaches to it are 
not lacking, and some of these approaches are noteworthy. 

The view of an upward curve or trend to betterment in 
the world, manifested especially in human activity, was natur­
ally characteristic of the rationalists, but it is interesting to 
note that cultural advance was recognized and the term ttpro_ 
gress" itself was used by the Epicurean poet Lucretius. Essential 
to all understanding of Epicureanism is a grasp of its strict 
materialism. Like Democritus and Epicurus, Lucretius recog­
nized only atomic particles of matter moving in space, and he 
explained the nature of everything in terms of the atoms of 
which it was compounded, and their motions, contacts and 
collisions. No divine guidance was recognized here, no distinc­
tively rational principles, no dominant or prevailing purposes 
and values. All is in a flux; the mechanics of nature are ever 
changing the composition of things, disintegrating and recom­
bining the masses or clusters of atoms throughout existence. 
And besides this mechanical reassembling of particles, there is 
always the unaccountable power of each atom to swerve at any 
moment in any direction. In this world without plan, eternal 
duration would by the mere calculation of chances yield even­
tual recurrence, as has been noted. But how could it ever afford, 
let alone assure, genuine and reliable progress? 

The thought of Lucretius at this point is versatile rather 
than consistent. The universal atomic whirl and pulsation are 

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Ancient Approaches to the Idea of Progress 

not altogether random or chaotic. Under some conditions cer­
tain combinations persist or else are transformed in a definite 
direction. Driven by need or lured by use and advantage, men 
devised tools, perfected plans and methods which sustained 
them in what they possessed and opened to them still larger 
prospects of achievement. They found their place in nature 
and proceeded to fuller mastery of their territory. So, gradu­
ally in every field of activity, in farming and seafaring, in 
armament and legislation, in self-clothing and road-building, 
in all the arts, men step by step were taught by practice 
and mental activity to progress, progredientes, through time 
and by reason. 9 The acknowledgment of directive intelligence 
is surprising in the materialistic outlook of Lucretius. 

The recognition of a genuinely progressive course in 
human affairs by the Classical philosophers of more or less 
rationalistic bent, while it was not dominant, was significant in 
view of the generally unhistorical outlook of ancient thought 

which we have been considering. In Plato's theory of Ideas the 
supreme reality is the Idea of Good or the Principle of Value 

and Prevailing Perfection. There is always evil, and lesser and 
lower values are always contending with the higher, for there 
must always be something antagonistic to good and to per­
fection; but there is also possible advance in knowledge and 
in the arts, and this advance can have no bounds. This view 
accentuates one aspect of Plato's idealism, and it can be and 
has been criticized as overemphasis. For all his exaltation of 
sovereign Reason, Plato's thought is marked by a deeply tragic 
conviction of our finitude and inconclusiveness in the assured 

mastery of values. 

Aristotle was less dramatic about men. Without exaltation, 

he gran ted them some reach beyond their immediate grasp. 
Like Plato, he traced the degeneration of the state, but he also 

pointed out the path of social order and government towards 
more perfect realization of justice and general welfare. He did 

"C/. De rerum natura, V: 1448ff. 

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not proceed to any rigid conclusion of a final advance or de­
cline, for while in any era some progress in the arts and crafts 
or knowledge or practice may be traced, the cycle of existence 
may sweep it all away, and, like Pandora's box, leave to man 
only hope. 

For more explicit advocacy of human progress, we must 
turn to the Stoic sages of Rome who, be it remembered, did 
not entertain the doctrine of eternal recurrence held by their 
predecessors in the Athenian schools. Especially noteworthy 
here are Cicero and Seneca. Cicero recognized both progress 
and the obstacles to it in man's social relations and activities. 
uMan is the source of both the greatest help and the greatest 
harm to man."w Yet while in so many ways men are hampered 
and also corrupted by the societies in which they have to live 
their lives, it is in and through society that they can advance 
in knowledge and in the arts. UWithout the association of men, 
cities could not have been built or peopled ... laws and customs 
were established, and ... the equitable distribution of private 
rights."11 From small beginnings men proceed to larger gains 
and advantages, progressionibus. We should also seek to discover 
and further the development of which we are capable until it 
is fully attained. 12 

Seneca was even more explicit in his belief in social pro­
gress, yet he combined it with his Stoic austere advocacy of the 
simple rational life. He saw the simple virtues in the lives of 

bygone generations, and the retrospect inclined him to final 
resignation. But he also looked to further advance. So he wrote 
to Lucilius: We should emulate our forebears and advance as 
they did, going beyond them. Mankind is still in its infancy, 
and future ages will know clearly much that to us now seems 
a closed book. We should trust to sound thinking, for ulife is 
the gift of the immortal gods, but living well is the gift of 

IUCicero, De officiis, II: v, 17; trans!' Walter Miller, Loeb Classical Library ed. 

lIDe officiis, II: iv, 15. 

12Cf. Cicero, De finibus, V: xxi; cited by A. O. Lovejoy and G. Boas, Primitivism 
and Related Ideas in Antiquity (Baltimore, 1935), 248£. 

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Ancient Approaches to the Idea of Pro~ress 

philosophy!:! Seneca was also nostalgic in his reflections on the 
Golden Age, in his praise of the long past, in his revulsion at the 
luxuries and vulgarities of his age. And he viewed with deep 
concern the eventual dissolution of it all, in words recalling the 
earlier Stoic belief in a cosmic conflagration: "A single day will 
see the burial of all mankind ... All that is famous and all that 
is beautiful, great thrones, great nations-all will descend into 
the one abyss, will be overthrown in one hour."" 

Do we not observe repeatedly here a characteristic tension 
between recognition and exaltation of great values, and doubt 
and dismay about their final undoing? This tragic outlook may 
be noted in the greatest Greek poets. Two examples suffice. 
In Aeschylus' Prometheus BOlll1d, the great culture hero 
recites with justified pride his noble services to mankind. His 
eloquent soliloquy reviews every field of activity in which he 
had led men from the savage burrows where they had groped 
like beasts, into the light of day: the light of skill and under­
standing and security and civilized life. But Aeschylus also 
portrays the titan Fire-Bringer as chained to a rock in the Cau­
casus. Great Zeus has condemned him; and his work for man, 
man's upward reach and progress, is doomed to ruin. 

Akin to the Promethean tragedy is the "Hymn to Man" 
in the famous Chorus of the Anti~ol1(" one of the finest pages 
in Sophocles: 

Wonders arc mallY, alld 110l1e is morcwonderflll tball mall; 
the powcy that crosses the white sea, drivell by the stormy 
south-wind, makillg a path ullder surges that threatell to 
engulf him; and Earth, the eldest of the gods, the im11l0r­
tal, the llllu/{'aried, doth he wear, turllillg the soil with the 
offspring of horses, as the plougbs go to alld fro from ycar 
to year. Alld the light-hearted race of birds, alld the tribe 
of savage beasts, alld the sea-brood of the deep, he sllares 
ill the Illeshes of his woven toils, he leads captive, man 

l:lSeneCa, Epist. moral., xc: 1, transI. R. M. Gummere, Loeb Classical Library ed. 

14Seneca, Quaestiones naturales, III: 29, cited in The Idea 0,/ Progress. G. H. 
Hildebrand, ed. (Berkeley, 1949), 106. 

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excellent in wit. And he masters by his arts the beast whose 
lair is in the wilds, who roams the hills; he tames the horse 
of shaggy mane, he puts the yoke upon his neck, he tames 
the tireless mountain bull. And speech and wind-swift 
thought, and all the moods that mould a state, hath he 
taught himself; and how to flee the arrows of the frost, 
when 'tis hard lodging under the clear sky, and the arrows 
of the rushing rain; yea, he hath resource for all; withollt 
resource hemeefs nothing that must come: only against 
Death shall he call for aid in vain; but from baffling mala­
dies he hath devised escapes. Cunning beyond fallcy's 
dream is the fertile skill which brings him, now to evil, 
now to good. When he honours the laws of the land, and 
that justice which he hath sworn by the gods to uphold, 
proudly stands his city: no city hath he who, for his rash­
ness, dwells with sin. Never may he share my hearth, never 
think my thoughts, who doth these things"" 

"Only against Death shall he call for aid in vain." This 
undertone in the UH ymn to Man" seems as tragic as in the 
culture paean of Prometheus. And the heroine of Sophocles is 
tragic indeed, with her utter commitment to the ageless laws 
of Heaven, and the doom to which her sublime devotion is 
bound. Yet the Chorus of Sophocles, just as the whole tragedy 
of Antigone, does not end on a note of despair. It is Platonic 
in its unwavering acknowledgment of the highest values, that 
they are the highest. They have no easy prevailing power in 
human lives and societies, but they alone have right; so how 
could they be ultimately futile? 

15S0phodes, AntigQne, lines 332f£., transl. R. C. Jebb. 

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