A threefold reduction. A single sentence strips "all these things" (πάντα ταῦτα — the fuss around one) along three axes: (1) συνήθη τῇ πείρᾳ — "familiar from experience" (nothing new, you have seen it; cf. 7.1); (2) ἐφήμερα τῷ χρόνῳ — "of a day in time" (fleeting); (3) EXERCISEῥυπαρὰ τῇ ὕλῃ — "foul in matter" (stripped to its stuff, unlovely; the operation of EXERCISEdefinition, cf. 2.12; 6.13). Three measures at once deflate the object of a false craving.

As it was among the buried. The closing move is EXERCISEthe memory of death: "everything now is just as it was among those we have buried" (οὓς κατεθάψαμεν). The very same things exercised the dead — and where are they, and where are their agitations? The historical frame drains the present of its importance: my "trouble" has already been, a thousand times, and a thousand times buried. The governing discipline is desire.