What Did the Romans Think the Future Would Be Like?

Summary by Krater

This video explores how ancient Greek and Roman philosophers envisioned the future and the end of the world, contrasting cyclical views of history with linear Christian eschatology.

From the video

Answers: How did ancient Greeks and Romans imagine the future and the end of the world?

• ancient Greek futures
• Roman cyclical history
• stoic cosmology
• Hesiod's ages of man
• Christian eschatology

What it concludes

• Stoics believed the world would end in a universal flood or conflagration before being restored.
• Ancient classical literature often proclaimed the decline of human society from a primeval golden age.
• Greek and Roman thinkers often incorporated nostalgia for a lost golden age into cyclical conceptions of history.
• Early Christians introduced a linear conception of time culminating in the second coming of Jesus.
• Romans believed that with reform, discipline, and virtue, they could delay the inevitable dissolution and fall of their empire.