Not an argument but a scene with someone else's line. Marcus does not prove that dying is not to be feared — he sets a scene and puts into it the direct speech of an outsider: ἀναπνεύσομέν ποτε ἀπὸ τούτου τοῦ παιδαγωγοῦ; — "shall we at last breathe free of this paedagogue?" A παιδαγωγός was not a teacher but the slave who walked a child to school and kept watch over him: an appointed overseer. That, Marcus says, is how the presence of a good man feels to those beside him.

The qualification that stings worse than the charge. χαλεπὸς μὲν οὐδενὶ ἡμῶν ἦν, ἀλλὰ ᾐσθανόμην ὅτι ἡσυχῇ καταγινώσκει ἡμῶν — "he was harsh to none of us, but I could feel that he silently condemned us." The grievance is withdrawn and at once replaced by a worse one: it is not the deeds that grate but the unspoken verdict. There is nothing to accuse him of — and precisely for that he will not be forgiven.

The movement from the better man to oneself. ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἐπὶ τοῦ σπουδαίου — "so much for the man of worth" (σπουδαῖος is the school's term for the virtuous, nearly "the sage"); ἐφ’ ἡμῶν δὲ πόσα ἄλλα ἐστί — "and in our own case, how many other things there are." The usual consoling move would run the other way: "at least you are not like that." Marcus applies to himself not the mitigation but the aggravation.

What the whole argument is for. EXERCISEεὐκολώτερον ἐξελεύσῃ — "you will go out the more easily." The aim is not resentment but a loosening of the grip: if even the κοινωνοί (the "sharers," those with whom one's life is held in common), for whose sake you ἠγωνισάμην, ηὐξάμην, ἐφρόντισα — "fought, prayed, took thought" — themselves want you gone, then τί ἂν οὖν τις ἀντέχοιτο; — "what is there to hold on for?" Three aorists list what was invested; the single θέλουσί με ὑπάγειν answers them all.

The turn that cancels the grievance. The argument could have ended in bitterness, and Marcus posts a direct prohibition: MOTIFμὴ μέντοι διὰ τοῦτο ἔλαττον MOTIFεὐμενὴςMOTIF αὐτοῖς ἄπιθι. The same word εὐμενής stands at 8.47 of departing from life. Then the triad φίλος καὶ εὔνους καὶ ἵλεως ("a friend, well-disposed, gracious") and, above all, the ground: τὸ ἴδιον ἔθος διασῴζων — "preserving your own character." Their conduct does not alter yours precisely because yours is not a function of theirs.

The image of an easy death. ὥσπερ ἐπὶ τοῦ εὐθανατοῦντος εὐκόλως τὸ TERMψυχάριον ἀπὸ τοῦ σώματος ἐξειλεῖται — "as in one who dies easily the little soul slips free of the body." The verb ἐξειλέω is "to work oneself loose, to disentangle"; the diminutive ψυχάριον is not contempt but scale (cf. 9.3, where the ψυχάριον falls from its "husk" as one awaits a birth). The image is then transferred from the body to people: just so, without a wrench, one must come away from them.

The undoing of what had been joined. καὶ γὰρ τούτοις ἡ TERMφύσις συνῆψέ σε καὶ συνέκρινεν, ἀλλὰ νῦν διαλύει — two verbs of binding ("joined" and "compounded") against one of release. And hence DOGMAδιαλύομαι ὡς ἀπὸ DOGMAοἰκείων — "I am parted as from my own": the οἰκει- root is that of the Stoic doctrine of appropriation. The close keeps its measure: DOGMAοὐ μὴν ἀνθελκόμενος ἀλλ’ ἀβιάστως — "not dragged back (ἀνθέλκω, to pull in the opposite direction — the picture of one digging in his heels) but without violence"; and DOGMAἓν γὰρ καὶ τοῦτο τῶν κατὰ φύσιν. The governing discipline is desire, the sustaining one action.

A note on the translations. μὴ τὸ πανύστατον ἔσται τις — "will there not, at the very last, be someone"; Long gives "at least," Rogovin «в конце концов», which is closer to the Greek. And ἀλλὰ νῦν διαλύει Long turns into a question ("But does she now dissolve the union?") that the Greek does not have; the modernization restores the statement.