Inoculation by familiarity. Book VII opens with a catechism question: "what is TERMbadness?" — and an answer that dissolves the terror: it is what you have often seen. Evil is neither exotic nor unprecedented; it is the most worn-out plot in the world. Marcus tells us to hold this thought EXERCISEready at hand (πρόχειρον ἔχε — a technical formula of the school) for everything that happens (ἐπὶ παντὸς τοῦ συμβαίνοντος): the blow loses its surprise before it can land as a blow. The governing discipline is desire (what happens is received without shock); the sustaining one is assent (a prepared judgment is set against the impression).

Three tiers of histories. The argument rests on the experience of reading: the same things fill "the old histories, the middle, the recent" (αἱ παλαιαί, αἱ μέσαι, αἱ ὑπόγυιοι) — and the same things now fill "cities and houses." History supplies no new types of events, only new names; the private life of a household replays the same passions as the chronicles of kingdoms. Hence the conclusion — DOGMA"everywhere up and down you will find the same things": the recurrence thesis, given a cosmological ground in 6.37 (all things ὁμογενῆ καὶ ὁμοειδῆ) and a historical-empirical one here.

Familiar and short-lived. The closing pair — συνήθη καὶ ὀλιγοχρόνια — is a double devaluation: everything is familiar (nothing to marvel at) and short-lived (nothing to fear or cling to). Cf. Med. 2.14 (whoever lives even a little has seen it all); 7.49 (the future is read off the past); 12.26 (all things from everlasting are uniform and revolve in a circle). A typological echo outside the tradition — Ecclesiastes 1:9 ("nothing new under the sun"), with no genetic link.