Justus Lipsius, On Constancy 1.16

Examples of necessary alteration, or death in the whole world. That heaven and the elements are changed, and shall perish; the like is to be seen in towns, provinces, and kingdoms; finally, that all things here do turn about the wheel, and that nothing is stable or constant.

"It is an eternal decree, pronounced of the world from the beginning, and of all things therein, to be born and to die, to begin and to end. That supreme judge of all things would have nothing firm and stable but himself alone, as says the tragic poet, Sophocles: 

"From age and death God only stands free,
But all things else by time consumed be. 

"All these things which you behold and admire either shall perish in their due time, or at least be altered and changed: See you the sun? He faints. The moon? She labors and languishes. The stars? They fail and fall. 

"And howsoever the wit of man cloaks and excuses these matters, yet there have happened and daily do in the celestial body such things as confound both the rules and wits of the mathematicians. I omit comets strange in form, situation, and motion, which all the universities shall never persuade me to be in the air, or of the air. 

"But behold, our astrologers were sorely troubled of late with strange motions and new stars. This very year there arose a star whose increasing and decreasing was plainly marked, and we saw, a matter hardly to be credited, even in the heaven itself, a thing to have beginning and end. 

"And Varro cries out and affirms that the evening star called of Plautus Versperugo, and of Homer Hersperus, had changed his color, his bigness, his fashion, and his course. 

"Next unto the heaven, behold the air, it is altered daily and passes into winds, clouds, and showers. 

"Go to the waters. Those floods and fountains which we affirm to be perpetual, do sometimes fail altogether, and at other times change their channel and ordinary course. The huge ocean, a great and secret part of nature, is ever tossed and tumbled with tempests. And if you are wanting, yet has it its flowing and ebbing of waters, and that we may perceive it to be subject to decay; it swells and swages daily in its parts.

"Behold also the earth which is taken to be immovable, and to stand steady of its own force: it faints and is stricken with an inward secret blast that makes it to tremble; somewhere it is corrupted by the water, elsewhere by fire. For these same things do strive among themselves.

"Neither grudge you to see war among men, there is likewise between the elements. What great lands have been wasted, yea wholly swallowed up by the sudden deluges, and violent overflowings of the sea? 

"In old time the sea overwhelmed wholly a great island called Atlantis (I think not the story fabulous) and after that the mighty cities Helice and Bura. But to leave ancient examples, here in Belgica two islands with the towns and men in them. And even now in our time this lord of the sea Neptune opens to himself new gaps and sweeps up daily the weak banks of Friesland and other countries. 

"Yet does not the earth sit still like a slothful housewife, but sometimes revenges herself and makes new islands in the midst of the sea, though Neptune marvel and be moved thereby? And if these great bodies which to us seem everlasting are subject to mutability and alteration, why much more should not towns, commonwealths, and kingdoms, which must needs be mortal, as they that do compose them? 

"As each particular man has his youth, his strength, old age, and death, so fares it with those other bodies. They begin, they increase, they stand and flourish, and all to this end, that they may decay. 

"One earthquake under the reign of Tiberius overthrew twelve famous towns of Asia, and as many in Campania in Constantine's time. One war of Attila, a Scythian, prince destroyed a hundred cities. The ancient Thebes of Egypt is scarcely held in remembrance in this day, and a hundred towns of Crete not believed ever to have been. 

"To come to more certainty, our elders saw the ruins of Carthage, Numantia, Corinth, and wondered thereat. And ourselves have beheld the unworthy relics of Athens, Sparta, and many renowned cities, yea even that Lady of all things and countries, falsely termed everlasting Rome, where is she? Overwhelmed, pulled down, burned, overflowed: she is perished with more than one kind of destruction, and at this day she is ambitiously sought for, but not found in her proper soil. 

"See you that noble Byzantium, being proud with the seat of two empires? Venice lifted up with the stableness of a thousand years continuance? Their day shall come at length. And thus also our Antwerp, the beauty of cities, in time shalt come to nothing. For this great master builder pulls down, sets up, and, if I may so lawfully speak, makes a sport of human affairs. And like an image maker, forms and frames to himself sundry sorts of portraitures in his clay.

"I have spoken of towns and cities. Countries likewise and kingdoms run the very same race. Once the East flourished. Assyria, Egypt and Jewry excelled in war and peace. That glory was transferred into Europe, which now like a diseased body seems unto me to be shaken, and to have a feeling of her great confusion nigh at hand. 

"Yea, and that which is more and never enough to be marveled at, this world having now been inhabited these five thousand and five hundred years, is at length come to its dotage. And that we may now approve again the fables of Anaxarchus, in old time hissed at, behold now there arises elsewhere new people, and a new world. 

"O the law of necessity, wonderful, and not to be comprehended! All things run into this fatal whirlpool of ebbing and flowing. And some things in this world are long lasting but not everlasting.

"Lift up your eyes and look about with me, for it grieves me not to stand long upon this point, and behold the alterations of all human affairs, and the swelling and swaging of them as of the sea: arise you; fall you; rule you; obey you; hide you your head; lift you up yours and let this wheel of changeable things run round, so long as this round world remains. 

"Have you Germans in time past been fierce? Be you now milder than most people of Europe. Have you Britons been uncivil heretofore? Now exceed you the Egyptians and people of Sybaris in delights and riches. Has Greece once flourished? Now let her be afflicted. Has Italy swayed the scepter? Now let her be in subjection. 

"You Goths, you Vandals, you vilest of the barbarians, peep you out of your lurking holes, and come rule the nations in your turn. Draw near you rude Scythians, and with a mighty hand hold you a whiles the reins of Asia and Europe; yet you again soon after give place and yield up the scepter to another nation bordering on the ocean. Am I deceived? Or else do I see the sun of another new empire arising in the West?" 

IMAGE by Kirk D. Keyes