Three imperatives of adornment. φαίδρυνον — "make yourself shine": the adornment is not purple (cf. 7.15) but three qualities — simplicity (ἁπλότης), TERMmodesty-conscience (αἰδώς), and TERMindifference to "what lies in the middle between TERMvirtue and TERMvice" (τὸ ἀνὰ μέσον — the formal definition of the ἀδιάφορα: all that is neither virtue nor vice). Then two maxims of utmost brevity: DOGMA"love the human race" (φίλησον τὸ ἀνθρώπινον γένος — philanthropy as a command, the summit of οἰκείωσις) and "follow god" (ἀκολούθησον θεῷ — the schools' inherited formula, for the Stoics equivalent to life according to universal nature). Three lines cover the three disciplines: how to hold oneself, how to hold to people, how to hold to the Whole.

Democritus unnamed. "He says" (ἐκεῖνος φησιν) — and then the famous thesis of PERSONDemocritus: "all things by convention (νομιστί), in reality (ἐτεῇ) only the TERMelements" (a recasting of DK 68 B9/B117: "by convention sweet, by convention bitter… in reality atoms and void"; Marcus substitutes the Stoic στοιχεῖα for the atoms). The text then is corrupt (Long's edition prints the place with obeli †; Rogovin conjures a "poet"): on the most natural reading Marcus answers the atomist with his own weapon — "it is enough to remember that all is by convention: and that is very little already" (ἤδη λίαν ὀλίγα). If all values are merely conventional, TERMindifference to them comes the easier; the opponent's reductionism is turned into a prop of askesis — the same "either-way" manoeuvre as in the disjunction "providence or atoms" (7.32). The governing discipline is action; the sustaining one, desire.