ABSTRACT
The idea of progress is obviously connected to that of economic development and the constant increase in wealth. The question of whether or not the ancients had a concept of progress like the modern concept has been recurring in historiography for more than a century and a half. Auguste Comte, who theorized the modern idea of progress, followed by John Stuart Mill and Wilhelm Dilthey, maintained that the ancients had no such idea. Dilthey in particular contrasted the cyclical vision of time and history, typical of the ancients, with the linear vision of time, which supposedly derives from the messianic, finalistic idea of history of the Judaic-Christian tradition. The first view supposedly excludes the idea of progress; the second implies it.108
