Ekpyrōsis

The world in fire

The Stoics taught that the cosmos periodically dissolves back into the creative fire from which it came — an ekpyrōsis in which all things return to the divine reason that is their seed. From that fire the same world is then born again, identical in every detail, in an endless cycle of restoration. Some later Stoics softened or doubted the doctrine, but it stayed the signature of their cosmology.