Two fighters, and the whole difference lies in the weapon. A μονομάχος is a gladiator, a man who fights with a sword; a παγκρατιαστής is a competitor in the pankration, the unarmed contest fought with hands and body. Marcus is not comparing skill or nerve but the detachability of the means from the man: a sword can be dropped, a hand cannot.

A grim play on a word. ἀποτίθεται καὶ ἀναιρεῖται — "he lays down [the sword] and is ἀναιρεῖται." The verb means both "is picked up" and "is done away with." Both senses work: the sword gets picked up (it is no longer his) and he gets removed. Rogovin renders the outcome plainly, "and that is the end of him"; in the Greek it is got by a pun.

What is required of the pancratiast. οὐδὲν ἄλλο ἢ συστρέψαι αὐτὴν δεῖ — "nothing but to clench it." Συστρέφω is "to twist together, to gather into a knot." The whole preparation comes down to a single motion: nothing to fetch, nothing to recall, nothing to reach for. This is exactly what the Stoic πρόχειρον means — a word whose literal sense is "before the hand": 12.9 is the image behind the term (cf. 7.1, EXERCISEprokheiron).

How it sits in the book. The neighbouring 12.6 says how a hand comes to be strong — by habituation; here we are told why it must be a hand and not a sword. Cf. 7.61: the art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, "so as to stand ready and unfalling against what comes on unforeseen." Dancing requires knowing the figures in advance, wrestling only requires not losing one's footing; in both places the argument is the same: a principle must not be equipment but a condition. The governing discipline is action, the sustaining one assent.