On the Nature of the Universe

The treatise ascribed to Ocellus Lucanus argues, in compressed Pythagorean fashion, that the universe is eternal: it was never generated and can never perish, for it is complete and contains all things, with nothing outside it to act upon it. Change is confined to the sublunary world of the four elements, the realm of coming-to-be and passing-away, while the aetherial heavens revolve unchanged.

A closing section turns to human generation, treating marriage and the begetting of children as a duty owed to the cosmic order. The work’s defence of an ungenerated world links it to Aristotle, and it was preserved and cited as a venerable witness to Pythagorean physics.