Why "the briefest." The passage opens by justifying its own genre: EXERCISEfor the man "steeped" (δεδευμένος) in true teachings, even the briefest and most commonplace saying is enough (ἐν μέσῳ κείμενον — "lying in plain view") — to remind him of ἀλυπία and ἀφοβία. The participle δεδευμένῳ is from δεύω, "to wet, to soak through": the teachings are not memorised but absorbed, and so a hint suffices. This is the theory of EXERCISEπρόχειρον outright: a short formula works only for one already saturated.

The Homeric line and what Marcus does with it. The quotation is a schoolroom commonplace on transience. Marcus takes it and stretches it over the whole passage, but with a lowering: Homer has φύλλα, "leaves"; Marcus has, three times over, φυλλάρια — "little leaves," the diminutive. And under that diminutive label he brings in turn: the children (τεκνία, also a diminutive), the praisers and blamers, and finally DOGMAthe inheritors of your posthumous fame (ὑστεροφημία). The series ascends in its claim to permanence — and all three receive one name.

A symmetry that consoles and devalues at once. Those who acclaim "convincingly" (ἀξιοπίστως) and those who blame in secret are set in one line: there is no difference between them, both are foliage. The same device as at 10.19 and 10.13, but here without mockery — with a botanical composure.

The wood that puts out new ones. ἔπειθ’ ὕλη ἕτερα ἀντὶ τούτων φύει — "then the wood produces others in their place." The word ὕλη means both "forest" and "matter"; Marcus almost certainly hears both (cf. 10.33, where ὕλη is "material"). Nature does not grieve for what has fallen; she puts out the next.

The self-reproach. τὸ δὲ ὀλιγοχρόνιον κοινὸν πᾶσιν, ἀλλὰ σὺ πάντα ὡς αἰώνια ἐσόμενα φεύγεις καὶ διώκεις — "brief duration is common to all things, yet you flee and pursue everything as though it were to be everlasting." The error is named exactly: not that you desire, but that you desire as if the object were eternal.

A close in two moves. EXERCISEμικρὸν καὶ καταμύσεις — "a little, and you will close your eyes"; and immediately beyond it: the man who carried you out will soon be mourned by another. The gaze does not stop at your death but leaps over it — to the death of the one who buried you. Cf. 8.44; 4.33. The governing discipline is desire, the sustaining one assent.

Textual note. δεδευμένῳ ("steeped," from δεύω) is printed here; part of the tradition gives δεδηγμένῳ ("bitten," from δάκνω). Both translations support the first reading: Rogovin, «проникшемуся»; Long, "penetrated by."