Reference articles on history, science, culture and more
Surprise meSurprise meSubscribe
Encyclopedia

Eternity

Endless time or timelessness

Wikipedia contributorsAdapted for Fathomly · View authors
5 min read
Source updated August 31, 2026
Image credit is listed at the end of this article.

Eternity, also sempiternity or forever, or perpetuity, is time with no end i.e. infinite.

In the context of human life, eternity and death are co-existing realities.

01Etymology

Cicero used the word aeternitatis, in the work: De Inventione 1, 27, 39., written at some time between the years 88 - 81 BC which is an early or the earliest extant written form from which the English word is derived; first shown in history in a circa 1374 translation by Chaucer. The first usage in French is 1175: eternitez: B. de Ste-Maure, within 'ducs de Normandie.

02Philosophy

Eastern tradition

In traditional Chinese 永 (yǒng 'eternity') exists in the 論語 (Analects).

Western tradition

Classical

The concept of eternity formed in ancient philosophy was specifically from within the Platonic tradition. During the Classical period (8th-7th century BC - 473/529 AD) Plato (c. 428-423 BC - 348/347 BC) described time as a moving image of eternity (in Timaeus 37 D) using the word: αἰών. Plato stated the kosmos was ἁγἡρων (ageless) in Timaeus 33a, in 37e6-38a6 the eternal forms are contrasted with the temporality of the world. Aristotle (384-322 BC) stated οὐρανοῦ was eternal (in Book I of Περὶ οὐρανοῦ) and an eternal world (in Physics).

The ancient Greek word for everlastingness was ἀίδιος (aidios) as exists via Plotinus, who also used the word aoin (eternity), in Ennead III.7.

17th century

Thomas Hobbes was re-stating the sense of the definition of Boethius when published 1662, as a response to John Wallis, he wrote that he considered that "eternity is a permanent now".

19th century

In post revolution France, revolutionary Louis Auguste Blanqui wrote his 1872 cosmological prison literature hypothesis L'Éternité par les astres, while imprisoned in Fort du Taureau sea fortress.

03Physics

Camille Flammarion (1893) described eternalness as being the absolute.

In 1983; Steinhardt proposed eternal inflation, the first of two models based on Guth's inflationary model of 1981 (originating with Староби́нский (Starobinsky) 1979) of the so-called big bang theory for the explanation of the orign of the universe; the second model chaotic inflation (1983) - eternal chaotic inflation (1986), was proposed by Линде (Linde)

The possibility of eternal universes with reference to General Relativity was a subject of physics since the 21st century.

04Poetry

The kanji for eternity is used in the Japanese Manyōshū. The comments in The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare

Who buys a minute's mirth to wail a week?
Or sells eternity to get a toy?

are in a poem based on the work of Ovid and Livy of the history of Ancient Rome particularly the rape of Lucretia by Tarquin.

06Religion

Eternity as infinite duration is an important concept in many lives and religions. God or gods are often said to endure eternally, or exist for all time, forever, without beginning or end. Religious views of an afterlife may speak of it in terms of eternity or eternal life.

Abrahamic religions

In Genesis 21:33 of the Old Testament El-Olam is God-Eternal.

Jesus In the Gospels explicitly threatens the wicked with an eternal punishment. In the context of Revelation 14: 9-11 of the Bible, the book Revelation describes how smoke from application of burning sulphur onto those who worship the beast will transit upwardly forever. The position onto which sinners are condemned for all time into hell, if the souls are punished in a conscious state of existence, is known as traditionalism, and annihilationism if the punishment on arrival in the infernal dominion is that their consciousness is then annulled-extincted. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225, 1274) believed in an eternal God, without either a beginning or end; the concept of eternity is of divine simplicity, thus incapable of being defined or fully understood by humankind. Christian theologians may regard immutability, like the eternal Platonic forms, as essential to eternity.

In the Islamic context, while azal indicates eternity at the beginning of known time and abad at the end; sarmad indicates all (both) aspects, this latter as an adjectival form is in surah 28 parts 71 and 72 of the Qur'an. In Islamic culture the eternity of the universe was a subject in the writings of Abu Ali ibn Sīna (died 1037), Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Abu Walid Muhammad Ibn Rushd.

Egyptian

Ancient Egyptian eternity terms were neheh, for cyclical time, and djet, for linear. Rameses III (c.1187-1156 B.C.E.) funerary temple was: 'United-with -Eternity'.

Greco-Roman

Mythic Iliadical ἀθάνατος (athanatos) is the immortal.

The ancient greek word for everlasting, and/or eternal, exists in the Orphica Hymni.

The timelessness in divinity of classical period Augustine (354-430 AD), as exists in Book XI of the Confessions, and Boethius (c. 480-524), in Book V of the Consolation of Philosophy were adopted as the reality of the subject for later thinkers in the western tradition of philosophy. Boethius stated eternity was: interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio, which is translated as "simultaneously full and perfect possession of interminable life". and nunc permanens, which in English is a: permanent now.

Vedic

Within the Vedic Rigveda, Aditi, as a goddess, is eternal.

07Images

Fine art

Folk art

Graphic art

Some of the works of MC Escher were explorations of the idea of eternity.

Symbolism

Eternity is often symbolized by the endless snake, swallowing its own tail, the ouroboros. The circle, band, or ring is also commonly used as a symbol for eternity, as is the mathematical symbol of infinity, \infty. Symbolically, these are reminders that eternity has no beginning or end.

Watch videos about EternityExplainers and documentaries on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Eternity”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

Images, from Wikimedia Commons:

Fathomly is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Wikimedia Foundation. Spotted a problem? Tell us.

Continue exploring

Related topics

Aion (deity)

Aion is a Hellenistic deity associated with time, the orb or circle encompassing the universe, and the zodiac. The "time" which Aion represents is perpetual, unbounded, ritual, and cyclic: The future is a returning version of the past, later called aevum (see Vedic Sanskrit Ṛtú).

Aeon

The word aeon , also spelled eon, originally meant "life", "vital force" or "being", "generation" or "a period of time", though it tended to be translated as "age" in the sense of "ages", "forever", "timeless" or "for eternity". In Greek, it literally refers to the timespan of one hundred years.

Eternal Now (New Age)

Eternal Now is a concept of time perception suggested by some proponents of New Age spirituality. Its characteristics vary from increased awareness of the present moment to a broader, more open and holistic perception of one's subjective past and potential variants of future.