The harvest. Two lines from Euripides' Hypsipyle (fr. 757 Nauck) — from the most famous consolatory tirade of antiquity, quoted by the consolations from Cicero's day to the late anthologies: life "is reaped like the fruited ear" (κάρπιμον στάχυν), "and one is, and another is not" (τὸν μὲν εἶναι, τὸν δὲ μή). The image transfers death from the register of catastrophes to that of agricultural operations: the ear is cut not in punishment but because it has ripened; harvest is the field's purpose, not its ruin. Its nearest kin in the corpus is the ripe olive of 4.48, falling "blessing the earth that bore it": Marcus keeps a whole bed of ripeness-images in which the end is a form of maturity (cf. 7.23: shapes of wax — "for the briefest while").

The dryness of the second line. After the figured first verse — an almost book-keeping statement: "one is, another is not." No gravestones, no names: a bare census of what is on hand. That neutrality is itself the EXERCISEexercise: to learn to say "τὸν δὲ μή" of anyone — and one day of oneself — in the tone with which the reaper surveys the cut swath. Cf. 7.19 (eternity "swallows" the Chrysippuses), 7.25 (the world kept ever young by remelting), 10.34 (as leaves, so men — the same Homeric register of nature-similes). The discipline is desire.