POPULAR BELIEFS, ETC. 385 



ten ages, the first of which is the Golden Age. After a ren- 

 ovation by fire the Golden Age will return, when, accord- 

 ing to the authority of Virgil, the serpent will perish; the 

 earth will produce her crops spontaneously ; the kid will 

 no longer fear the lion ; the grape will be borne upon the 

 thorn-bush, and scarlet, and yellow, and royal purple will 

 become the native colors of the woolly fleece. 



"Ipsa? lacte domum referent distenta capellse 

 Ubera ; nee magnos metuent armenta leones. 

 Ipsa tibi blandos fundent cunabula flores ; 

 Occidet et serpens, et fallax herba veneni 

 Occidet ; Assyrium vulgo nascetur amomum. 



Molli paulatim flavescet campus arista, 

 Incultisque rubens pendebit sentibus uva, 

 Et duras quercus sudabunt roscida mella." 



The Stoics, who derived the doctrine from the Phoeni- 

 cians, and were its principal advocates among the Greeks, 

 held that the world would be destroyed by a conflagra- 

 tion. This they thought would occur " when the sun and 

 stars shall have drunk up the sea." " Yes," says quaint old 

 Thomas Burnet, " but how long shall they be a drinking 

 it?" The Stoics, in speaking of the restoration of the earth 

 after the final conflagration, employ the same terms as we 

 find in the sacred Scriptures. This, to say the least, is an 

 interesting coincidence. Chrysippus calls it "Apocatasta- 

 sis" — restitution — as St. Peter does in the Acts. Marcus 

 Antoninus several times calls it " Palingenesia" — regenera- 

 tion — as our Savior does in Matthew, and Paul in the epis- 

 tle to Titus; and Numenius has the two scripture terms 

 " resurrection" and " restitution." 



The doctrines of the Pythagoreans — save a few, who in 

 later times were led off by Aristotle — were nearly iden- 

 tical, in respect to periodical revolutions, with those of the 

 Stoics. Like the philosophy of the Stoics, that of Pythag- 



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