A trilemma by exhaustion. Sixteen words built as a formal division of cases: ἤτοι… ἢ… ἢ… and the closing παρὰ δὲ ταῦτα οὐδέν — "besides these, nothing." The same device as the disjunction "providence or atoms" (9.39) and "either you can bear it or you cannot" (10.3): count every exit and show that none is fearful. The force lies not in the consolation but in the completeness of the list.

Each branch is disarmed by its own argument. And the arguments differ; it is not one applied three times:

1. You stay here — ἤδη εἴθικας, "you are used to it by now." An argument from habit: a hardship one has grown accustomed to is no longer a hardship.
2. You go elsewhere — καὶ τοῦτο ἤθελες, "and that is what you wanted." An argument from consent: a move made by one's own will cannot be a complaint.
3. You die — ἀπελειτούργησας. Here everything rests on a single word.

The word the third branch turns on. ἀπελειτούργησας comes from λειτουργία, the public duty imposed on a citizen: one who has served out his appointed liturgy is discharged from it, and the verb with ἀπο- means precisely "has served it out, the obligation is done." Death is presented neither as loss nor as escape but as a closed account: the duty is performed, the ledger settled. For an emperor who bore an unbroken λειτουργία all his life, the word is not chosen at random.

And therefore — εὐθύμει. The conclusion DOGMAοὐκοῦν εὐθύμει ("be of good cheer, then") is drawn with οὐκοῦν, as a conclusion in a syllogism: since all three cases have been examined and none gives ground for it, despondency is logically baseless. Cf. 5.29 ("the smoke — and I am gone") and 10.8, where the same ladder of outcomes ends in departure. The governing discipline is desire, the sustaining one assent.