Nihil novi sub sole. Marcus Aurelius 6.37

In the great cosmic dance of nature, ancient philosophers find abstract forms constantly repeating. We cannot predict the particular movement of the dance, how it must go in some arbitrary window of time & space, but we can be sure it will always have the forms of natural life. In modern terms, we cannot know how living species must look or act in any particular moment, but we can know that they will take the form of cells whose life involves various iterative processes of respiration and replication. We cannot predict historical outcomes, within the story of our own species, but we can be sure these outcomes will involve the existential drama inherent in our mortality. Promises will be made; some shall then be broken, and others kept. Mourning and exultation will be there; seizing and releasing, in turn. Nihil novi sub sole.

Ὁ τὰ νῦν ἰδὼν πάντα ἑώρακεν, ὅσα τε ἐξ ἀϊδίου ἐγένετο καὶ ὅσα εἰς τὸ ἄπειρον ἔσται· πάντα γὰρ ὁμογενῆ καὶ ὁμοειδῆ.

The man who has seen what exists today has seen everything: all that happened in the eternal past, and all that will occur in the boundless future. For things arise ever from the same basic origins, in forms whose kind is familiar.