University of Virginia Library

The cyclical Theory of History is a doctrine that all
events occur in cycles that are more or less alike. It
has two main forms, one that posits cosmic cycles and
one that posits cycles only in human affairs. Though
the second of these concepts is logically independent
of the first, it is sometimes found in company with it.
One must also distinguish those thinkers, like Plato and
Aristotle, who believed in periodic cataclysms and
beginnings, from those, like the Stoics, who believed
in the return of identical events. The doctrine in some
of its forms is found in ancient India, in Babylonia,
and in Greece.