SVF I.109

Original — Ancient Greek

τὸν Ζήνωνα διὰ τῆς ἐκπυρώσεως ἀποφαινόμενον ἀνίστασθαι πάλιν τοὺς αὐτοὺς ἐπὶ τοῖς αὐτοῖς, λέγω δὲ Ἄνυτον καὶ Μέλητον ἐπὶ τῷ κατηγορεῖν, Βούσιριν δὲ ἐπὶ τῷ ξενοκτονεῖν καὶ Ἡρακλέα πάλιν ἐπὶ τῷ ἀθλεῖν, παραιτητέον. — Nemesius, De nat. hom. 38: ἔσεσθαι γὰρ πάλιν Σωκράτη καὶ Πλάτωνα καὶ ἕκαστον τῶν ἀνθρώπων σὺν τοῖς αὐτοῖς καὶ φίλοις καὶ πολίταις … καὶ πᾶσαν πόλιν καὶ κώμην καὶ ἀγρὸν ὁμοίως ἀποκαθίστασθαι.

StoicOs Translation

Zeno, who declares that through the conflagration the same people rise again for the same things — I mean Anytus and Meletus to accuse, Busiris to murder his guests, and Heracles once more to perform his labours — must be rejected. — Nemesius: For there will again be Socrates and Plato and every human being, with the same friends and fellow citizens … and every city and village and field will likewise be restored.

Context

Tatian, attacking Greek philosophy, singles out Zeno's doctrine of cosmic recurrence with mocking examples; Nemesius, a Christian bishop, reports the same doctrine more soberly, down to the restored cities and fields.

Source notes:Text verified against von Arnim, SVF I (1903), no. 109, p. 32 (OCR of the scanned edition). Tatian, a Christian apologist, cites the doctrine in order to reject it (“paraitēteon”); von Arnim appends Nemesius' fuller parallel on the return of Socrates and Plato, and refers to SVF II 623–631.

What the source actually tells us

Two hostile Christian witnesses, centuries apart, attribute the recurrence doctrine to Zeno by name (Nemesius to “the Stoics”). The mocking examples are Tatian's rhetoric; the doctrinal core — the same individuals return after the conflagration — follows directly from SVF I.107's cycle.

Philosophical meaning

If the next world unfolds from the same seed by the same reason, it unfolds the same: the recurrence is the cycle of SVF I.107 thought through to its human conclusion. Nothing and no one is lost to the whole — but nothing escapes its own life either. Later Stoics debated whether the returning Socrates is the same man or one indistinguishable from him.

Scholarly uncertainty

Both witnesses are polemical and late; the vivid examples (Anytus, Busiris, Heracles) are Tatian's, and Nemesius names the school, not Zeno. That Zeno drew the recurrence consequence himself rests on Tatian's explicit attribution and its coherence with I.102 and I.107 — probable, not certain.

Go deeper

• Read SVF I.107 — fire as the seed of the next world →
• Read SVF I.98 — conflagration and the seed of all things →