A syllogism in a ring frame. The passage is built as a formal inference and begins and ends on one word — δραπέτης, "runaway slave." The steps: (1) he who flees his master is a runaway; (2) the master is the law; (3) therefore the law-breaker is a runaway; (4) but the man who TERMgrieves, rages or fears thereby does not want what has been ordained; (5) ἄρα — "therefore," these too are runaways. The word ἄρα sets the conclusion by all the rules of school logic.

The widening of what counts as an offence. The decisive step is the fourth. Ordinarily "to break the law" means to commit a deed; Marcus transposes it into the sphere of disposition: not to want what has happened is already flight. And three tenses are listed — γεγονέναι, γίνεσθαι, γενήσεσθαι, "to have been, to be, to come to be": DOGMAthe refusal to accept can face the past, the present or the future, and each time it is desertion.

νόμος, νέμων. The core of the passage is an etymological play: DOGMAὅς ἐστι νόμος, DOGMAνέμωνDOGMA ὅσα ἑκάστῳ ἐπιβάλλει — "who is law (νόμος), apportioning (νέμων) to each what falls to him." Νόμος and νέμω are indeed of one root, and Marcus uses the fact: law is not a prohibition but a dealing out of shares. And so resistance to it is less a disobedience than a refusal of one's own portion. Cf. 10.20 (συμφέρει/φέρει) and 10.21 (φιλεῖ γίνεσθαι) — the third argument running that is read out of the language itself.

Why a runaway slave. The image is not chosen for abuse. A δραπέτης is one who has left without becoming free: he is still another's property, only now also in flight. Just so grief and anger do not remove a man from under the law; they merely put him in the position of one hiding inside the very order he belongs to. Cf. 2.16 (the soul makes itself an abscess on the cosmos) and 4.29 (he who does not know what the world is, is a stranger and a runaway from the city). The governing discipline is desire, the sustaining one assent.