Meditations IX.30

Take a bird’s-eye view of the world, its endless gatherings⁴⁸ and endless ceremonials,⁴⁹ voyagings manifold in storm and calm, and the vicissitudes of things coming into being, participating in being, ceasing to be. Reflect too on the life lived long ago by other men, and the life that shall be lived after thee, and is now being lived in barbarous countries; and how many have never even heard thy name, and how many will very soon forget it, and how many who now perhaps acclaim, will very soon blame thee, and that neither memory nor fame nor anything thing else whatever is worth reckoning.

• 48.See vii. 3, 48.
• 49.nearly = our colloquial “functions.”