Transient quintessence from group manifold reductions or how all roads lead to Rome

We investigate the accelerating phases of cosmologies supported by a metric, scalars and a single exponential scalar potential. The different solutions can be represented by trajectories on a sphere and we find that quintessence happens within the 'arctic circle' of the sphere. Furthermore, we obtain multi-exponential potentials from 3D group manifold reductions of gravity, implying that such potentials can be embedded in gauged supergravities with an M-theory origin. We relate the double exponential case to flux compactifications on maximally symmetric spaces and S-branes. In the triple exponential case our analysis suggests the existence of two exotic S(D - 3)-branes in D dimensions.