Genre and place in the book. A leveling maxim: the greatest conqueror and his groom, once dead, are "in one and the same state." The principal discipline is desire (the EXERCISEmemory of death). PERSONAlexander in Marcus is a standing exemplum of the vanity of worldly power in the face of death.

Alexander and the muleteer. PERSONAlexander the Macedonian — conqueror of the world; the ὀρεωκόμος — the keeper of his mules, the least of servants. Death "brought them to the same" (εἰς ταὐτὸ κατέστησαν): greatness in life changes nothing in the outcome. The same lesson stands in the catalogue of conquerors at 03-03 (Alexander, Pompey, Caesar — who "themselves departed from life") and at Med. 8.3 (the conquerors against the sages).

The disjunction: seminal reasons or atoms. Here too Marcus keeps ready the same fork of two cosmologies: either both are "taken up" (ἀνελήφθησαν) into the same TERMseminal reasons (σπερματικοὶ λόγοι) of the cosmos — the Stoic reabsorption into the creative reason — or "scattered" (διεσκεδάσθησαν) into atoms (the Epicurean-Democritean picture). Under either, the outcome is one: king and groom are equal. The same figure appears in 06-04 (exhalation or dispersion) and 06-10 ("providence or atoms").

Disciplines and parallels. The principal one is desire (the leveling power of death dissolves both fear and pride). Parallels: 03-03 (the triad of conquerors); Med. 8.3; 9.29 (Alexander among the dead); the disjunction — 06-04, 06-10; Med. 7.32; reabsorption into the seminal reason — 04-14; the image of death — EXERCISEthe memory of death.