Make this time a gift to yourself. An imperative against the love of fame: "grant this [present] time (τοῦτον τὸν χρόνον) to yourself" — do not squander it on care for what will be said afterwards. Those who chase "DOGMAposthumous fame" (ὑστεροφημία) "do not reckon" (οὐ λογίζονται) that the people of the future will be just such as the present ones who "weigh on them" (οὓς βαροῦνται): the future admirers are no better than today's tiresome ones — and "they too are mortal" (κἀκεῖνοι θνητοί). The praise one awaits issues from lips just as mortal and short-lived.

Their opinion is nothing to you. The closing pole-axe question: "what is it to you at all (τί ὅλως πρὸς σέ) if they utter such sounds (φωναί) or hold such an TERMopinion (ὑπόληψις) of you?" Another's judgment is outside "what is mine," all the more the judgment of the not-yet-born (cf. 7.34 — look at the very judges; 04-19 — the fame-lover forgets that those who remember him will also soon die). The strict term by the word is ὑπόληψις. Textually: the Greek οὐ λογίζονται — "do not reckon" (Long's text restored as "do not consider"; the reading "do consider" is a plain source typo). Rogovin, moreover, renders the opening "σεαυτῷ χάρισαι τὸν χρόνον" interpretively — "try to win over your contemporaries" (reading χρόνον as "the people of one's time"); the Greek and Long say "grant this time to yourself." The governing discipline is desire (not to crave posthumous praise), the sustaining one assent (not to appropriate another's opinion).