Satiety with sameness. An image from the amphitheatre: the same spectacle seen again and again (τὰ αὐτὰ ὁρώμενα), its "uniformity" (τὸ ὁμοειδές), in the end cloys (προσκορῆ). So with the whole of life: to watch it is the same satiety. The governing discipline is desire.

"All the same." The ground is the Stoic physics of recurrence: "all things above and below are DOGMAthe same and from the same" (τὰ αὐτὰ καὶ ἐκ τῶν αὐτῶν). The cosmos supplies nothing radically new (cf. 06-37: whoever has seen the present has seen all). This is the reverse face of the same argument: there a consolation (nothing is missed), here a sobering to the point of tedium (to await the "unprecedented" is pointless).

"How long, then?" (μέχρι τίνος). The closing question is not a complaint but a EXERCISEprick of the memory of death: if all recurs and nothing new will come, why cling to duration? "How long?" prepares one for a calm departure — not because life is bad, but because it is exhaustible at a glance. Cf. 04-50 (long life adds nothing to what has been seen).

Parallels. DOGMARecurrence — 06-37; Med. 2.14 (whoever has lived a little has seen all); 7.49; 10.27 (a man of forty with understanding has "seen" all that was and will be); the EXERCISEmemory of death in the form of "how long?"