"This too has its λόγος." The second verse of the poetic anthology, from Euripides' Antiope (fr. 208 Nauck): even the extreme case — "if I have been neglected by the gods, and my two children with me" — is met not with a wail but with a formula of trust: ἔχει λόγον καὶ τοῦτο. Marcus copies from the tragedian a ready saying of DOGMAaccepting fate: since the world is governed by providence, every outcome — including the one that looks like abandonment — has a ground, hidden from a partial view. λόγος here is not "words" but "reason, sense": even to the inexplicable the presumption of the Whole's rationality applies.

A father's undertone. The verse rings out especially in an author who lost several children in infancy (of thirteen, few survived). "Neglect by the gods" is no abstraction but the most personal of the temptations to murmur; and it is precisely for this that Marcus keeps another's line ready. Cf. 02-11 (the gods have so arranged things that it depends on us not to fall into genuine evil) and 7.75 (whatever the nature of the Whole does, it does with a ground). By the same device as the whole anthology, poetry here works not as ornament but as a thing held ready for the hard moment. The discipline is desire.