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Tiresias: The Ancient Mediterranean Religions Source Database



10314
Sextus, Outlines Of Pyrrhonism, 1.209-1.210
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1. Sextus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, 1.5, 1.7, 1.210-1.241, 2.9-2.10 (2nd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)

2. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of The Philosophers, 1.13-1.16, 9.5, 9.20, 9.61, 9.71-9.73 (3rd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE)

9.5. He was exceptional from his boyhood; for when a youth he used to say that he knew nothing, although when he was grown up he claimed that he knew everything. He was nobody's pupil, but he declared that he inquired of himself, and learned everything from himself. Some, however, had said that he had been a pupil of Xenophanes, as we learn from Sotion, who also tells us that Ariston in his book On Heraclitus declares that he was cured of the dropsy and died of another disease. And Hippobotus has the same story.As to the work which passes as his, it is a continuous treatise On Nature, but is divided into three discourses, one on the universe, another on politics, and a third on theology. 9.20. He also said that the mass of things falls short of thought; and again that our encounters with tyrants should be as few, or else as pleasant, as possible. When Empedocles remarked to him that it is impossible to find a wise man, Naturally, he replied, for it takes a wise man to recognize a wise man. Sotion says that he was the first to maintain that all things are incognizable, but Sotion is in error.One of his poems is The Founding of Colophon, and another The Settlement of a Colony at Elea in Italy, making 2000 lines in all. He flourished about the 60th Olympiad. That he buried his sons with his own hands like Anaxagoras is stated by Demetrius of Phalerum in his work On Old Age and by Panaetius the Stoic in his book of Cheerfulness. He is believed to have been sold into slavery by [... and to have been set free by] the Pythagoreans Parmeniscus and Orestades: so Favorinus in the first book of his Memorabilia. There was also another Xenophanes, of Lesbos, an iambic poet.Such were the sporadic philosophers. 9.61. 11. PYRRHOPyrrho of Elis was the son of Pleistarchus, as Diocles relates. According to Apollodorus in his Chronology, he was first a painter; then he studied under Stilpo's son Bryson: thus Alexander in his Successions of Philosophers. Afterwards he joined Anaxarchus, whom he accompanied on his travels everywhere so that he even forgathered with the Indian Gymnosophists and with the Magi. This led him to adopt a most noble philosophy, to quote Ascanius of Abdera, taking the form of agnosticism and suspension of judgement. He denied that anything was honourable or dishonourable, just or unjust. And so, universally, he held that there is nothing really existent, but custom and convention govern human action; for no single thing is in itself any more this than that. 9.71. Some call Homer the founder of this school, for to the same questions he more than anyone else is always giving different answers at different times, and is never definite or dogmatic about the answer. The maxims of the Seven Wise Men, too, they call sceptical; for instance, Observe the Golden Mean, and A pledge is a curse at one's elbow, meaning that whoever plights his troth steadfastly and trustfully brings a curse on his own head. Sceptically minded, again, were Archilochus and Euripides, for Archilochus says:Man's soul, O Glaucus, son of Leptines,Is but as one short day that Zeus sends down.And Euripides:Great God! how can they say poor mortal menHave minds and think? Hang we not on thy will?Do we not what it pleaseth thee to wish? 9.72. Furthermore, they find Xenophanes, Zeno of Elea, and Democritus to be sceptics: Xenophanes because he says,Clear truth hath no man seen nor e'er shall knowand Zeno because he would destroy motion, saying, A moving body moves neither where it is nor where it is not; Democritus because he rejects qualities, saying, Opinion says hot or cold, but the reality is atoms and empty space, and again, of a truth we know nothing, for truth is in a well. Plato, too, leaves the truth to gods and sons of gods, and seeks after the probable explanation. Euripides says: 9.73. Who knoweth if to die be but to live,And that called life by mortals be but death?So too Empedocles:So to these mortal may not list nor lookNor yet conceive them in his mind;and before that:Each believes naught but his experience.And even Heraclitus: Let us not conjecture on deepest questions what is likely. Then again Hippocrates showed himself two-sided and but human. And before them all Homer:Pliant is the tongue of mortals; numberless the tales within it;andAmple is of words the pasture, hither thither widely ranging;andAnd the saying which thou sayest, back it cometh later on thee,where he is speaking of the equal value of contradictory sayings.


Subjects of this text:

subject book bibliographic info
academy Vogt, Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Diogenes Laertius (2015) 112
aenesidemus Bett, How to be a Pyrrhonist: The Practice and Significance of Pyrrhonian Scepticism (2019) 25, 31; Vogt, Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Diogenes Laertius (2015) 112
alexandria Vogt, Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Diogenes Laertius (2015) 112
cyrenaics Bett, How to be a Pyrrhonist: The Practice and Significance of Pyrrhonian Scepticism (2019) 25
democritus Bett, How to be a Pyrrhonist: The Practice and Significance of Pyrrhonian Scepticism (2019) 25, 26
diogenes laertius Bett, How to be a Pyrrhonist: The Practice and Significance of Pyrrhonian Scepticism (2019) 26, 31; Vogt, Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Diogenes Laertius (2015) 112
empiric school of medicine Bett, How to be a Pyrrhonist: The Practice and Significance of Pyrrhonian Scepticism (2019) 25
heraclitus Bett, How to be a Pyrrhonist: The Practice and Significance of Pyrrhonian Scepticism (2019) 25, 26, 31; Vogt, Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Diogenes Laertius (2015) 112
parmenides Bett, How to be a Pyrrhonist: The Practice and Significance of Pyrrhonian Scepticism (2019) 26
plato Bett, How to be a Pyrrhonist: The Practice and Significance of Pyrrhonian Scepticism (2019) 8
protagoras Bett, How to be a Pyrrhonist: The Practice and Significance of Pyrrhonian Scepticism (2019) 25, 26
pyrrho Bett, How to be a Pyrrhonist: The Practice and Significance of Pyrrhonian Scepticism (2019) 25, 26
pyrrhonism Vogt, Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Diogenes Laertius (2015) 112
pyrrhonists Vogt, Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Diogenes Laertius (2015) 112
skepticism, academic Bett, How to be a Pyrrhonist: The Practice and Significance of Pyrrhonian Scepticism (2019) 25
skepticism, academic skepticism' Vogt, Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Diogenes Laertius (2015) 112
skepticism, as inquiry Bett, How to be a Pyrrhonist: The Practice and Significance of Pyrrhonian Scepticism (2019) 8
skepticism Vogt, Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Diogenes Laertius (2015) 112
sotion Vogt, Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Diogenes Laertius (2015) 112
timon of phlius Bett, How to be a Pyrrhonist: The Practice and Significance of Pyrrhonian Scepticism (2019) 26
xenophanes Bett, How to be a Pyrrhonist: The Practice and Significance of Pyrrhonian Scepticism (2019) 25, 26; Vogt, Pyrrhonian Skepticism in Diogenes Laertius (2015) 112
zeno of elea Bett, How to be a Pyrrhonist: The Practice and Significance of Pyrrhonian Scepticism (2019) 26