55 



tion. Lest, however, the fabulous device* of these 

 men should deceive you, and lest some one should 

 think that this geniture of the world was contrived 

 by these most wise men, without a cause, it is re- 

 quisite that we should explain all things particu- 

 larly, in order that the great sagacity displayed in 

 this device, may, by the most diligent expositions, 

 be intimated to all men. 



" The world had not a certain day of its origin, 

 nor was there any time in which the world was 

 formed by the counsel of a divine intellect, and pro- 

 vidential Deity ; nor has the eager desire of human 

 fragility been able to extend itself so far as to con- 

 ceive or explain the origin of the world, especially 

 since the greater apocatastasis of it, which is ef- 

 fected by a conflagration or a deluge f, consists of 



life. And the seventh age is Saturnian, in which it is natural to 

 separate ourselves from generation, and transfer ourselves to an 

 incorporeal life. And thus much we have discussed, in order to 

 procure belief that letters, and the whole education of youth, are 

 suspended from the Mercurial series." 



* Firmicus calls the geniture of the world a fabulous device, 

 because it supposes the mundane periods to have had a temporal 

 beginning, though they are in reality eternal. For in a fable, the 

 inward is different from the outward meaning. 



f In the greater apocatastasis of the world, which is effected by 

 a deluge or a conflagration, the continent becomes sea, and the 

 sea continent: "This, however," says Olympiodorus, (in his Scholia 

 on the first book of Aristotle's Treatise on Meteors,) " happens in 

 consequence of what is called the great winter, and the great sum- 

 mer. But the great ivinter is when all the planets become situated 



