The technique: not "remember death" but "where are they now." ἀναπολεῖν is "to wind back, to go over again" (used of thread and of memory); and Marcus asks not for a single effort but for συνεχῶς, "continually." And after the going-over comes the order to stop: ἐφιστάνειν, "to halt over it" and put one question. Cf. 8.25, where the same technique is carried out as a roll of names, and 11.26, where one is told to recall some one of the ancients. The nearest twin is 4.50: there the same technique is named by the cognate noun ἀναπόλησις ("a going-over") and furnished with just such a list of half-forgotten Roman names — Cadicianus, Fabius, Julianus, Lepidus.

Three words of answer, and the third is the best. καπνὸς καὶ σποδὸς καὶ μῦθος — "smoke and ash and a tale." The first two are material; the third shifts the reckoning into memory: a story is left. And that too is taken away at once: ἢ οὐδὲ μῦθος, "or not even a tale." Cf. 12.24, where τῦφος ("fume") had already been named; here the smoke stands literally.

Names given together with their places. The list is chosen not by greatness but by possession: each man is named with what he owned — an estate, gardens, Baiae (a fashionable resort), Capri. The only one we still securely recognise is Tiberius; the others were picked precisely because they were known to "everyone," and have become known to no one. The example thus works against itself as well, which is probably the best confirmation that it is right.

A trap set at the very end. ὁ γὰρ ἐπὶ ἀτυφίᾳ τῦφος τυφόμενος πάντων χαλεπώτατος — "for the fume that smoulders over freedom from fume is the hardest of all." Three words of one root in a row: τῦφος is "smoke, fume" and by transference "conceit," and τυφόμενος is "smouldering." Pride in the absence of pride is called the worst — and with that the passage forbids one to use it as an occasion for superiority. The governing discipline is assent, the sustaining one desire.