MED. 12.21Discipline of desire
Original · ancient Greek
Leopold · Teubner 1908
Commentary

Two negations, and they are not about one thing. οὐδεὶς οὐδαμοῦ ἔσῃ — "you will be no one, nowhere." The pair is not chosen for emphasis: the first word takes away the person, the second the place. Rogovin's "you will vanish" runs the two together; Long keeps them apart: "nobody and nowhere."

The circle widens three times. First you, then "any of the things you now see," then "any of those now living." The movement is the same as in 12.7: from oneself outward — but here it serves not measurement but levelling: you will not vanish alone, nor first.

Why this is not a complaint. The three infinitives — μεταβάλλειν, τρέπεσθαι, φθείρεσθαι — stand under the verb πέφυκεν, "is so by nature." Perishing here is neither a corruption nor a fault: it belongs to the constitution of things as much as change does. Cf. 8.6: the work of the nature of the whole is "to transpose what is here to there, to change it, to lift it hence and carry it thither."

And the clause the whole thing was written for. ἵνα ἕτερα ἐφεξῆς γίνηται — "so that others may come to be in succession." This is a purpose clause, not a clause of result: the perishing has a function. Without that line the passage would be a memento mori; with it, it becomes an argument of the discipline of desire — what departs gives up its place, and the order of that yielding is TERMchange itself. Cf. 9.28, and the thought carried further in 12.23, where death is named as that by which the cosmos stays "ever young and at its prime." The governing discipline is desire, the sustaining one assent.

DisciplineDiscipline of desire
Record added2026-07-16
Statuspublished
Discipline of desire

Original · ancient Greek
Leopold · Teubner 1908
Related2
Commentary

Two negations, and they are not about one thing. οὐδεὶς οὐδαμοῦ ἔσῃ — "you will be no one, nowhere." The pair is not chosen for emphasis: the first word takes away the person, the second the place. Rogovin's "you will vanish" runs the two together; Long keeps them apart: "nobody and nowhere."

The circle widens three times. First you, then "any of the things you now see," then "any of those now living." The movement is the same as in 12.7: from oneself outward — but here it serves not measurement but levelling: you will not vanish alone, nor first.

Why this is not a complaint. The three infinitives — μεταβάλλειν, τρέπεσθαι, φθείρεσθαι — stand under the verb πέφυκεν, "is so by nature." Perishing here is neither a corruption nor a fault: it belongs to the constitution of things as much as change does. Cf. 8.6: the work of the nature of the whole is "to transpose what is here to there, to change it, to lift it hence and carry it thither."

And the clause the whole thing was written for. ἵνα ἕτερα ἐφεξῆς γίνηται — "so that others may come to be in succession." This is a purpose clause, not a clause of result: the perishing has a function. Without that line the passage would be a memento mori; with it, it becomes an argument of the discipline of desire — what departs gives up its place, and the order of that yielding is TERMchange itself. Cf. 9.28, and the thought carried further in 12.23, where death is named as that by which the cosmos stays "ever young and at its prime." The governing discipline is desire, the sustaining one assent.

DisciplineDiscipline of desire
Record added2026-07-16
Statuspublished