The death of a whole court. Another roll-call of the dead (EXERCISEthe memory of death), but scaled up: not single persons, as in 8.25, but the whole court (ὅλη αὐλή) of the first princeps — wife, daughter, kin, friends, the famous counsellors (Agrippa, Areius, Maecenas), physicians, diviners. The most brilliant circle of the empire has "died" entire (ὅλης αὐλῆς θάνατος).

From the person to the race. Marcus raises the scale: "turn to the others — not the death of a single man, like the Pompeys" (οἷον Πομπηίων), but the death of a race. Hence the epitaph "the last of his line" (ἔσχατος τοῦ ἰδίου γένους): however much the ancestors laboured "to leave a successor" (διάδοχον καταλιπεῖν), someone of necessity proves the last, and then the whole race dies (ὅλου γένους θάνατος). The diminishment by lineage overlays the temporal one (8.21 — the whole earth a point; 8.5 — "nowhere," like Hadrian and Augustus). There are no term-lemmata in the text. The governing discipline is desire (to accept the mortality of even the greatest houses).