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World Ages and the Body Politic
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 August 2011
Extract
When, at an unknown but manifestly early period, speculation regarding the duration and destiny of the world began, the thinkers of those days had two analogies to guide them, and consequently two divergent conclusions were reached. The first was the recurrent cycle of the seasons; the second, the growth, maturity, decay and death of the human and all other animal bodies. Reasoning from the one, some arrived at the conclusion that the world, at least the earth and mankind, had passed and would always continue to pass through a series of epochs, limited in number, which when they had ended would recommence, and so on indefinitely. From the other datum the result was reached that as a man dies and does not come to life again (for even the fairly wide-spread and early doctrine of reincarnation supposed only that the soul would be given a new earthly body of some kind, not that the whole individual would return), so the earth, or the universe generally, would grow old and die and that would be the end of it. It is the purpose of this paper to examine these two ideas and one or two offshoots of them as they are known to have appeared in the two classical civilizations of Europe, and especially in Greece, and if possible to draw some tentative conclusions as to which, if either, can be found more characteristic of native thought.
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- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1961
References
1 Hesiod, Works, 109 ff.
2 Fgts. 2, 3 Mullach, fgt. i Diels-Kranz, cf. A 9.
3 It is necessary to speak with great reserve in discussing Anaximandros or any of the early Ionians, by reason of the unsatisfactory nature of our information. Their writings are all lost, and we are reduced to the reports of authors who lived many centuries later and certainly in many cases got their accounts, not from the Ionians’ own books, but from doxographies and the like. This has been abundantly illustrated in the case of Thales by Dicks, D. R. in C.Q., N.S. ix (1959), pp. 294–309Google Scholar.
4 Fgts. 17, 26 and 28 Diels-Kranz, lines 70 ff., 90 f. Mullach.
5 Tim. 32 c, d.
6 Laws 677a ff.
7 Politicus 269c ff. For a recent discussion of the myth, see Herter, H. in Bonner Jahrbücher, Heft 158 (1958), pp. 106–117Google Scholar.
8 Arist., Pol. 1269a4 ff. Cf., however, Aristotle, Jaeger, Aristoteles, p. 131, n. 4.
9 The fullest exposition of all this is of course Lucretius, v, 91 ff.
10 Ibid., ii, 1150 ff.
11 Augustine, Sermo lxxxi, 8.
12 See C.Q. xviii (1924), 115 f.
13 2 Peter 3, 8, half-quoting Ps. xc (lxxxix Septuagint), 4.
14 Augustine discusses the question several times, see Serm. cxxv, 4, in Psalm, vi, 1, epist. cxcix, 17, CD. xx, 7. His authorities for opposing attempts to calculate the date of the Last Day are Matt. 14, 14, Act. 1, 7 and Thess. 5, 2.
15 There was another and a quaint bond between them; both were solemnly warned away from the mysteries celebrated by Alexandros of Abonuteichos, Lucian, Alexander, 38, cf. 25. The reason naturally was that both, though on very different grounds, rejected Alexandros' mumbo-jumbo.
16 Bidez, J., Eos, ou Platon et l'Orient, Brussels, 1945Google Scholar.
17 If this is so, it may be taken as strengthening A. D. Nock's contention (J.R.S., xlix, 1959, p. 1) that “Stoicism is from beginning to end a purely Greek phenomenon.”
18 De die natali 17, 5–6 (p. 44 Mommsen).
19 “Hae facient dextrae (i.e., the hands of those who fought at Pharsalus are responsible for) quidquid nona (non codd.) explicat aetas, ut uacet a ferro.”
20 Juvenal 13, 28.
21 Hdt. i, 94, 5–5
22 Ibid., 91,2–3.
23 The relevant passages concerning this theory, which are somewhat confused and contradictory, are conveniently assembled by Thulin, Die etruskische Disciplin, i, p. 81. The authorities are all Latin, their source presumably Caecina, at first hand or otherwise.
24 Lactantius, diuin. inst. vii, 15, 14.
25 Florus, prooem. 4 ff.