Meditations X.31

Let a glance at Satyron call up the image of Socraticus or Eutyches or Hymen, and a glance at Euphrates the image of Eutychion or Silvanus, and a glance at Alciphron Tropaeophorus, and at Severus Xenophon or Crito.⁴⁷ Let a glance at thyself bring to mind one of the Caesars, and so by analogy in every case. Then let the thought strike thee: Where are they now? Nowhere,⁴⁸ or none can say where. For thus shalt thou habitually look upon human things as mere smoke⁴⁹ and as naught; and more than ever so, if thou bethink thee that what has once changed will exist no more throughout eternity. Why strive then and strain⁵⁰? Why not be content to pass this thy short span of life in becoming fashion?

What material, what a field for thy work dost thou forgo! For what are all these things but objects for the exercise of a reason that hath surveyed with accuracy and due inquiry into its nature the whole sphere of life? Continue then until thou hast assimilated these truths also to thyself, as the vigorous digestion assimilates every food, or the blazing fire converts into warmth and radiance whatever is cast into it.⁵¹

• 47.Xenophon and Crito are well known. Severus was probably the father of Marcus’ son-in-law (i. 14). Euphrates was the philosopher friend of Pliny and Hadrian. Nothing certain is known of the others.

  Pliny is Pliny the Younger, whose letters praise the Stoic Euphrates.

• 48.See vii. 58.
• 49.xii. 33 and verses at end of manuscript A. See Introduction p. 1.
• 50.The manuscript reading what then (or, thou then) in what? is unintelligible.
• 51.See iv. 1.