A Point on the Earth
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ἀλλὰ τὸ δοξάριόν σε περισπάσει; ἀπιδὼν εἰς τὸ τάχος τῆς πάντων λήθης καὶ τὸ χάος τοῦ ἐφʼ ἑκάτερα ἀπείρου αἰῶνος καὶ τὸ κενὸν τῆς ἀπηχήσεως καὶ τὸ εὐμετάβολον καὶ ἄκριτον τῶν εὐφημεῖν δοκούντων καὶ τὸ στενὸν τοῦ τόπου, ἐν ᾧ περιγράφεται· ὅλη τε γὰρ ἡ γῆ στιγμὴ καὶ ταύτης πόστον γωνίδιον ἡ κατοίκησις αὕτη; καὶ ἐνταῦθα πόσοι καὶ οἷοί τινες οἱ ἐπαινεσόμενοι;
But will your petty fame distract you? Look off to the swiftness of the oblivion that overtakes everything, and the chasm of boundless time on either side, and the emptiness of applause’s echo, and the fickleness and want of judgment of those who seem to acclaim you, and the narrowness of the place in which it is confined. For the whole earth is a point, and of it what fraction is this tiny corner, our dwelling? And here, how many are they — and of what sort — who will praise you?
Against the pull of reputation: measured against the abyss of time on either side and the pinpoint smallness of the earth, the applause of a fickle, ill-judging crowd is an empty echo.
The third impediment is the subtlest: not anger or bodily pain but the craving for reputation, δόξα. Marcus attacks it with the diminutive δοξάριον — "your paltry little glory" — and then applies his standard cosmic solvents. Fame is dissolved first in time: on either side of the present stretches an ἄπειρος αἰών, a boundless immensity that will forget everyone, so that praise is an ἀπήχησις, a mere echo already fading. It is dissolved next in space: the whole earth is a στιγμή, a geometric point, and one’s own country a scarcely-computable fraction of that point.
What remains once time and space have shrunk fame to nothing is the quality of the admirers themselves. Marcus notes their εὐμεταβολία, their fickleness, and their ἄκριτον, their lack of judgment: even the applause you do get comes from people who cannot tell good from bad and will change their minds tomorrow. This is a recurring move in the Meditations — the honour that men chase is worthless both because the audience is vanishing and because it is not worth pleasing (compare the sharper treatment at 4.19). The undercurrent is liberation: seeing the smallness of the stage frees the actor from stage-fright.
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