A saying of Epictetus cited by Marcus: ψυχάριον εἶ βαστάζον νεκρόν — "you are a little soul carrying a corpse." The human being appears as a soul lugging dead matter about. The image works in two directions at once: (1) it devalues the body, calling it not a "companion" or a "house" but a corpse — that in which there is no longer any life and nothing to prize; (2) it locates the "I": you are the ψυχάριον (the soul), not the νεκρόν (the body), which is merely carried. The body is not you; it is a weight attached to you (DOGMAthe self is in the soul / ruling faculty, not in the flesh).

The diminutive is deliberate: ψυχ-άριον (a poor little soul) set against the bare νεκρόν (corpse) — a disdain for both as small beside what matters: the rational ruling centre, which alone is the "man."

04-41 — the saying in pure form, attributed to Epictetus (preserved only here). The cognate series "I am the inner thing, not the vessel":

• Med. 10.38 — what pulls the strings, hidden within, is the man; do not include the "vessel" and the attached organs;
• 02-02 — the bare definition of the human composition (flesh, pneuma, ruling part);
• Med. 8.24; 9.36 — the body in its material unsightliness;
• 09-03 — the same diminutive pair: the ψυχάριον falls out of its ἔλυτρον ("husk") — a deflation of the pathos of death;
• 09-24 — «πνευμάτια νεκροὺς βαστάζοντα»: the same image in the plural — people as little souls carrying corpses (the view from above on the Nekyia).

In 04-41 the image serves the discipline of assent: the right view of oneself is a bare definition of the human being (soul + corpse) that strips the body of its inflated value. Logically it is paired with the "vessel" of Med. 10.38 and the definitions of the body (02-02): all of them separate the "I" from the flesh. A secondary effect is detachment (DOGMAself-is-hegemonikon) and an incidental memento mori (what you carry is already dead).