2. Greece and Rome.
In Greece a distinction must
be made between those philosophers who
believed in
cycles and those who believed that each cycle repeated
the
characteristics of its predecessor, or what was
called by Friedrich
Nietzsche the Eternal Recurrence.
Among the latter was Empedocles (fifth
century B.C.),
but even he, as far as the evidence goes, did not say
that every event was endlessly repeated. Yet Empedo-
cles did assert that the general course of each cycle
was
repeated in its successor and he also seemed to
believe in the
transmigration of souls. The course of
cosmic history ran from a period
when the force of
Love was in command, a time very like the Golden
Age
or the Age of Kronos. This was followed by the
entrance of Strife upon the
scene, to be followed in
turn by the predominance of Strife, apparently
the
worst of times. But when Strife was uppermost it began
to give way
again to Love, and finally Love returned
to take over the management of the
universe. The
rhythm was endless.
None of the Greek philosophers believed that the
cosmos had a beginning in
time; that idea entered the
Western world with Judaism and Christianity. In
contrast to the
mythographers, the philosophers all
believed the world to be everlasting,
though the pres-
ent condition of the world
might come to an end. Even
Plato in his Timaeus,
which was later used as a creation
myth, held that the matter out of which
the world was
made was everlasting, and for him the work of creation
was the forming of this preexisting matter into a cos-
mos. If then the world was endless in its duration, there
were
either no changes in it at all, or the changes must
have occurred in random
or orderly fashion. The Greek
philosophers, like their modern successors,
were un-
willing to accept a chaotic world and
indeed some
changes were so obvious that they could hardly escape
the
notice of a normal man. Among such were the
familiar examples of birth and
death, the apparent
disappearance of matter when it is burned or
dissolved
in water, the freezing and melting of liquids and solids,
sickness, growth, decay, the processes of digestion, and
the chemical
changes involved in metallurgy. It was
one of the intellectual achievements
of the early Greek
philosophers to attribute all such changes to
various
phases of one or more of what were later to be called
the
“elements.”
By the time of Heraclitus (early fifth century B.C.)
three and possibly four
of the elements were already
distinguished: fire, air, and water. This
might seem to
be a great reduction in itself of complexity to simplic-
ity, but Heraclitus went further. We
find him saying
in one of his fragments, “Fire lives the death
of air,
and air lives the death of fire; water lives the death
of
earth, earth that of water.” There are justifiable
grounds for
doubts about the authenticity of the details
in this series of changes, but
that the author believed
in a general pattern of elemental transmutations
is
clear. This pattern becomes even clearer in Aristotle
and the
changes occur in definitely described manners.
Fire changes to air by
losing its heat and earth changes
to water by losing its dryness. But
Aristotle does not
say that at one time the cosmos was entirely
composed
of one of the four elements and then produced the
others step
by step, after which they all eventually
returned to their primitive
material unity. The changes
occur as the sun moves along the ecliptic and
to that
extent there is a cosmic cycle in Aristotle's thinking.
Each
year brings about the same series of elemental
changes but the whole never
changes as a unit.
The Stoics are responsible for the clearest theory
of cosmic cycles, though
they attributed the source of
the idea to Heraclitus. According to Stoicism
there
would occur at a given time a general conflagration,
the ekpyrosis, after which the world would begin again
as it was in the distant past. The cycle as a whole was
called by Cicero
the Great Year (Annus Magnus). Its
length was variously calculated, now being 18,000 solar
years,
now 10,800. But that it was the year of all years
is clear enough. What was
desired was the length of
time which it would take for the heavenly bodies
to
return to the position that they had held at a defined
time,
thought of as a beginning.
One of the founders of Stoicism, Cleanthes (early
third Century B.C.), is
said to have described the
ekpyr-
osis
as a process of death and growth. The fire burns
up all things but is
followed by a period of moisture
in which the “seeds”
of everything remain. These seeds
begin to grow again at the proper time
and eventually
the cosmos is restored to what it was. The seeds in
question were called the spermatic logoi or perhaps
“principles,” (for only a vague word can name them),
which are material but probably as everlasting as fire
itself. Mysterious
as the doctrine is, the world turns
out to be self-destructive and
self-regenerative, like the
phoenix which may indeed be a symbol of the
process.
According to Cicero one of the later Stoics, Panae-
tius (second century B.C.), did not accept the doctrine
of the
ekpyrosis. But in spite of Cicero's well-known
admiration for Panaetius, he himself did accept it. He
describes it in his
treatise On the Nature of the Gods
(Book II, 46):
“There will ultimately occur a conflagra-
tion of the whole world, because when the
moisture
has been used up neither can the earth be nourished
nor will
the air continue to flow, being unable to rise
after it has drunk up all
the water; thus nothing will
remain but fire, by which, as a living being
and a god,
once again a new world may be created and the or-
dered universe restored as before.”
The process is based
on sensory observation. Moisture, i.e., water, is
dried
up by fire; the air, which normally is found between
the level
of fire and that of water, is exhausted by the
combustion, and thus fire
alone is left. What happens
to earth is not revealed. But by the time of
Cicero
Greek science was either the collection of data, such
as are
found in Pliny and Seneca, or it had turned to
mathematics, astronomy, and
geography. One finds
little scientific clarity in the philosophers.
The other pagan witnesses to the Stoic belief in the
ekpyrosis and the renewal of the world are Seneca,
Diogenes Laërtius, and Plutarch. But they add little
in the way of
detail, and for the most part we are
forced to rely on Christian writers
who referred to the
process in order to combat the ideas on which it
was
based or its supposed implications. It is they who tell
us that
the details of a given age will be repeated
identically in later ages.
Tatian (second century A.D.),
for instance, in his Adversus Graecos says, “Zeno [the
founder of
Stoicism] has shown that after the ekpyrosis
... men
will be resurrected as they were. And I say
that this must imply that
Anytus and Meletus will again
bring their accusation [against Socrates] and Busiris
slay the
Strangers, and Hercules perform his labors.”
It is Tatian
clearly who draws this inference, though
Eudemus, a pupil of Aristotle, had
attributed the same
belief to “the Pythagoreans.” In
fact the accusation
and trial of Socrates became a favorite example of
what
the eternal recurrence involved.
Yet Vergil in his Fourth Eclogue also plays on the
theme and mentions specific events and individuals that
will reappear in
the new age which is to come. In our
own time Shelley in the final chorus
of his dramatic
poem, Hellas, imitated Vergil,
verbally in places; and
a less important literary figure, George Moore, the
Irish
novelist, in his story “Resurgam,” depicts the
destruc-
tion of the world and its
restoration in some detail.
