Genre and place in the book. A two-part memento mori: (1) a catalogue of the dead — from physicians to whole cities; (2) the conclusion — the transience of all things and the counsel to depart easily, like a ripe olive. One of the book's strongest "death" passages.
The catalogue of the dead. A list of mounting irony: physicians (who knit their brows over the sick — and died themselves); astrologers (who foretold others' deaths "as something great"); philosophers (who argued endlessly about death and immortality); warriors (who killed their thousands); tyrants (who disposed of others' lives arrogantly, "as if immortal"). Each type is levelled by death — including those whose trade was about death or over it. Then whole cities: Helice, Pompeii, Herculaneum1; and acquaintances: one buries another and is then laid out himself. (The catalogue of deaths — cf. 03-03; EXERCISEmeditatio-mortis.)
The view from above on the transient. κατιδεῖν τὰ ἀνθρώπινα — to "survey from above" human things as ἐφήμερα καὶ εὐτελῆ (ephemeral and cheap): yesterday μυξάριον (mucus, an embryo), tomorrow τάριχος ἢ τέφρα (a mummy or ashes). A sharp value-stripping definition of the body between two points (the move of definitio). (The EXERCISEview from above.)
The ripe olive. The close is an image: to pass this moment κατὰ TERMφύσιν and depart ἵλεων (graciously, without murmuring), as a ripe olive falls, εὐφημοῦσα τὴν ἐνεγκοῦσαν (blessing the nature that bore it) and χάριν εἰδυῖα τῷ φύσαντι δένδρῳ (thanking the tree that grew it). Death in its season is not violence but natural ripening; to live by nature is DOGMAthe life according to nature, and to depart in gratitude is DOGMAthe love of fate. The contrast with the tyrants "as if immortal": the wise man does not cling but falls when ripe. (Cf. the incense 04-15; 03-08.)
The disciplines. The principal one is desire: to be reconciled to death, to depart gratefully and without murmuring. The secondary is assent: the right judgement — all human things are ephemeral and cheap.
The exercises. EXERCISEThe memory of death (the catalogue of the dead + one's own departure) and the EXERCISEview from above (κατιδεῖν — the survey of human things as transient).
Parallels. The catalogue of the dead — 03-03; 04-32; Med. 6.47 (cf. EXERCISEmeditatio-mortis). To depart like a ripe olive, in gratitude — 04-15; 03-08 (cf. DOGMAamor-fati). All human things ephemeral, mucus → ashes — 04-35; Med. 2.17.