A demand addressed not to report but to fact. Μηδενὶ ἐξέστω εἰπεῖν ἀληθεύοντι — "let it be in no one's power to say truly" of you that you are not simple, not TERMgood. The move is subtle: Marcus does not forbid the report — he requires that it have no ground. The difference is settled by the next word: ἀλλὰ ψευδέσθω — "let him lie," whoever TERMsupposes such a thing of you. Another's ὑπόληψις is neither forbidden nor disputed: let him think it, but let him be wrong in thinking it.

Why this is achievable. DOGMAπᾶν δὲ τοῦτο ἐπὶ σοί — "and all this is up to you," followed at once by the test-question: τίς γὰρ ὁ κωλύων; — "for who is hindering you?" The demand is not utopian precisely because it bears not on reputation (not up to us) but on being such (up to us). Cf. 10.16 — "enough of discussing what a good man is like — be one."

The sharpness of the close. σὺ μόνον κρῖνον μηκέτι ζῆν, εἰ μὴ τοιοῦτος ἔσῃ — "only decide not to go on living, if you will not be such." And the ground: οὐδὲ γὰρ αἱρεῖ TERMλόγος μὴ τοιοῦτον ὄντα — "for reason does not take (does not approve) being otherwise." The verb αἱρεῖ is used in the school's sense, "reason so determines"; the point is not an appetite for death but that a life without this does not pass the test of reason. The same move as at 10.8 (if you cannot keep the names, go out) and 5.29 ("the smoke — and I am gone"): death is named not as an exit from hardship but as the consequence of abandoning one's own definition. The governing discipline is action, the sustaining one assent.