The grown-ups' children's games. A double deflating image: human affairs are "EXERCISEchildren's quarrels and games" (παιδίων ὀργαὶ καὶ παίγνια), and the people themselves "MOTIFlittle souls (πνευμάτια) carrying corpses about." The second is a variation on Epictetus's dictum "you are a little soul carrying a corpse" (4.41): a small spirit (πνευμάτιον) bearing a dead body. The EXERCISEview from above lays bare the nothingness of what seems important.

The "Nekyia." And so, Marcus says, the "Νέκυια" strikes the eye more vividly (ἐναργέστερον): the Nekyia is Book XI of the Odyssey, Odysseus's descent to the realm of the dead, where the shades drag out a semblance of life. The living, with their squabbles, are just this procession of shades. The governing discipline is desire (EXERCISEthe memory of death and contempt for the fuss).