Meditations VII.19

Through the universal Substance as through a rushing torrent²³ all bodies pass on their way, united with the Whole in nature and activity, as our members are with one another.

How many a Chrysippus,²⁴ how many a Socrates, how many an Epictetus²⁵ hath Time already devoured! Whatsoever man thou hast to do with and whatsoever thing, let the same thought strike thee.

• 23.See iv. 43; v. 23; vi. 15.
• 24.Referred by some (see Zeller, The Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, p. 158, English translation) to the theory that at each cyclical regeneration of the world the same persons and events repeat themselves. But see x. 31.

  Eduard Zeller was a German historian of Greek philosophy, whose history Haines calls “the standard work.”

• 25.Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights ii. 18, speaks of Epictetus as recently dead; Themistius, Orations v, p. 63 D, implies that he was alive under the Antonines. Lucian’s The Ignorant Book Collector 13 speaks of his earthenware lamp having been bought by an admirer for 3,000 drachmas.

  Lucian’s The Ignorant Book Collector is an invective against a man who buys fine books to pass for a man of letters without the learning to judge them.