This chapter and the next build upon the previous chapters by addressing a vital question that they leave open. What is the relation between the cosmos issued from the cosmogony and the cosmos previously destroyed at the conflagration? Is it the same cosmos? Or is it different? The issue of identity drove a great deal of dispute within the school. In fact, as I explain in Chapter Six, there were three clearly different Stoic theories of everlasting recurrence that opposed one another on this question. In the present chapter, I concentrate upon two broader and more basic metaphysical problems presupposed in the dispute over identity. The two problems, concisely put, are the following. (a) Why is the present cosmos present as opposed to past or future? In general, how is the present distinct from the past and the future? (b) Supposing that the present cosmos is type-identical to the previous one and the next how can they really occupy different places in time? And how can the times themselves be distinct if the events are type-identical?