56 



300,000 years ( b ). For the mundane apocatastasis 

 is accustomed to be accomplished by these two 

 events ; since a deluge follows a conflagration, be- 

 cause substances which are burnt can no other- 

 wise be renovated and restored to their pristine 

 appearance and form, than by the admixtions and 

 the concrete dust of the ashes, which are a collec- 



in a wintry sign, viz. either in Aquarius or in Pisces. And the 

 great summer is when all of them are situated in a summer sign, 

 viz. either in Leo or in Cancer. For as the Sun alone, when he is 

 in Leo, causes summer, but when he is in Capricorn winter, and 

 thus the year is formed, which is so denominated, because the Sun 

 tends to one and the same point (sviauros'), for his restitution is 

 from the same to the same, in like manner there is an arrange- 

 ment of all the planets effected in long periods of time, which pro- 

 duces the great year. For if all the planets becoming vertical, heat 

 in the same manner as the sun, but departing from this vertical 

 position refrigerate, it is not unreasonable to suppose, that when 

 they become vertical, they produce a great summer, but when they 

 have departed from this position, a great winter. In the great win- 

 ter, therefore, the continent becomes sea, but in the great summer 

 the contrary happens, in consequence of the burning heat, and 

 there being great dryness where there was moisture." At the end 

 too of this first book of Aristotle on Meteors, Olympiodorus ob- 

 serves, " that when the great winter happens, a part of the earth 

 being deluged, a change then takes place to a more dry condition, 

 till the great summer succeeds, which however does not cause the 

 corruption of all the earth. For neither was the deluge of Deu- 

 calion mundane, since this happened principally in Greece." See 

 the volume of my Aristotle containing this Treatise on Meteors, 

 p. 478, &c. Firmicus, therefore, is mistaken in asserting that a 

 deluge follows a conflagration ; since the contrary is true. For 

 it is obviously necessary that places which have been inundated 

 should afterwards become dry, or they would no longer be 

 habitable. 



