BOOK VIII
21. Turn it[1] inside out and see what it is like, what it comes to be when old, when sickly, when carrion. They endure but for a season, both praiser and praised, rememberer and remembered.[2] All this too in a tiny corner of this continent, and not even there are all in accord, no nor a man with himself; and the whole earth is itself a point.[3]
22. Fix thy attention on the subject-matter or the act or the principle or the thing signified. Rightly served! Thou wouldst rather become a good man to-morrow than be one to-day.
23. Am I doing some thing? I do it with reference to the well-being of mankind. Does something befall me? I accept it with a reference to the Gods and to the Source of all things from which issue, linked together, the things that come into being.
24. What bathing is when thou thinkest of it—oil, sweat, filth, greasy water, everything revolting—such is every part of life and every object we meet with.
25. Lucilla[4] buried Verus, then Lucilla was buried; Secunda Maximus,[5] then Secunda; Epitynchanus Diotimus, then Epitynchanus; Antoņinus Faustina, then Antoninus. The same tale always: Celer[6] buried Hadrianus and then Celer was buried. And those acute wits, men renowned for their prescience or their pride, where are they? Such acute wits, for instance, as Charax and Demetrius [the Platonist[7]]
- ↑ i.e. the body.
- ↑ iii. 10; iv. 3, § 3.
- ↑ iv. 3, § 3; vi. 36.
- ↑ The mother of Marcus, not as Gataker, Long, etc. the daughter.
- ↑ i. 15.
- ↑ See Index II.
- ↑ Arethas on Lucian, de Salt. § 63, alludes to this passage, but Lucian's Demetrius is the Cynic whom in Demon. § 3 he couples with Epictetus. (cp. also adv. Ind. § 19.) See Index II.
