a. Exposition by Augustine of the Opinion

164. About the first article Augustine in City of God 12.14 reports the opinion of the ancient philosophers saying that the numerically same things return in a circuit of time. They posit that after the ‘great year’, that is, after a circuit of 36,000 years, everything will return numerically the same.

165. Their reasoning is that when the cause of things returns the same, the effect will be the same; and, as it is, all the celestial bodies will return to their position, because, on the supposition of Ptolemy in his Almagest 9.6 that the heaven of the fixed stars moves one degree in a hundred years contrary to the daily motion, the result is that the motion from East to West will be completed in 36,000 years.