A triple τάχιστα. Three clauses — three "very soon"s — and in them the fate of any thing is taken apart into its components. Stoic physics knows two principles: the passive (ὕλη, matter) and the active (αἴτιον, the cause-logos; DL VII 134). Marcus carries both lines to their end: everything material (τὸ ἔνυλον) "vanishes into" the DOGMAsubstance of the Whole; every cause is "taken back" (ἀναλαμβάνεται — the verb for recalling a loan) into the TERMReason of the Whole. Dissolution is not perdition but the recall of a loan: the stuffs and powers lent out to a thing for a time are called in by their owner. Cf. 4.14: "you will vanish into that which begot you" (ἐναφανισθήσῃ τῷ γεννήσαντι) — the same rare verb ἐναφανίζεσθαι.

The grave of memory. The third clause finishes off what is usually held to be the refuge from the first two: fame. Not only the thing and its power, but "the memory of everything" (παντὸς μνήμη) is "buried under" in eternity — ἐγκαταχώννυται, a verb of interment: memory has a grave of its own, and it is dug by αἰών. A direct continuation of 7.6 (forgotten are both the hymned and the hymners) and of 2.17 (posthumous fame is oblivion); its neighbouring image is the river of time (4.43) that sweeps away every "now." The triple symmetry closes every exit: for the body — dissolution; for the power — recall; for the name — burial.

Consolation and sobering at once. As usual in Marcus, physics is ambiguously merciful: the same thought that removes the hope of being remembered removes the fear of vanishing — to vanish "into the substance of the Whole" is not to be lost but to return. The discipline is desire: the quenching both of the thirst to persist and of the thirst to remain in others' memory; what alone escapes the τάχιστα is the quality of the present act.