The view from above in time. The spatial survey of 7.48 is here unfolded along the axis of time. Look back on "so many TERMchanges of dominions" (τῶν ἡγεμονιῶν μεταβολάς) — the falls of kingdoms, the turns of dynasties; from that experience "one may foresee the future too" (EXERCISEπροεφορᾶν) — not prophetically, but by DOGMAuniformity: what is to come is "wholly of the same form (ὁμοειδῆ) and cannot step out of the rhythm of what happens now." History invents no new types of event; the ῥυθμός is one.

Forty years = ten thousand. Hence the famous equation: "it is the same (ἴσον) to survey human life for forty years or for ten thousand" — for "what more will you see?" (τί γὰρ πλέον ὄψει;). The argument repeats 6.37 ("whoever has seen the present has seen all") and 2.14 (whoever has lived a little has seen the same things), but with a political-historical slant: not the physics of the elements but the chronicle of powers supplies the proof. The ethical upshot is twofold: consolation in mortality (a short life "misses" nothing essential — it has already caught the whole repertoire of being) and sobriety against the craving for novelty (to await the "unprecedented" is to misunderstand the ῥυθμός). Cf. 04-32 (the epochs of Vespasian — the same comedy), 12.24. The strict term μεταβολή is in the text. The discipline is desire.