The Eternal Return of Fire
The cosmos undergoes periodic conflagrations and rebirths; all things participate in an eternal cycle of creation and dissolution.
Early Stoics held that the cosmos periodically returns to a state of pure fire (ekpyrosis) before reconstituting itself identically. This cosmic cycle underpins the Stoic view that one's place in the whole is eternal and meaningful, while simultaneously making attachment to the particular version of things irrational.
Time is a river of vanishing moments, and its current is swift.
The ekpyrosis doctrine parallels modern cosmological theories of cyclic universes, demonstrating the Stoics' ambition to integrate physics and ethics.
Meditations