Vitae philosophorum

There is nothing good or bad by nature, for if there is anything good or bad by nature, it must be good or bad for all persons alike, just as snow is cold to all. But there is no good or bad which is such to all persons in common; therefore there is no such thing as good or bad by nature. For either all that is thought good by anyone whatever must be called good, or not all. Certainly all cannot be so called; since one and the same thing is thought good by one person and bad by another; for instance, Epicurus thought pleasure good and Antisthenes thought it bad; thus on our supposition it will follow that the same thing is both good and bad. But if we say that not all that anyone thinks good is good, we shall have to judge the different opinions; and this is impossible because of the equal validity of opposing arguments. Therefore the good by nature is unknowable.

The whole of their mode of inference can be gathered from their extant treatises. Pyrrho himself, indeed, left no writings, but his associates Timon, Aenesidemus, Numenius and Nausiphanes did; and others as well.

The dogmatists answer them by declaring that the Sceptics themselves do apprehend and dogmatize; for when they are thought to be refuting their hardest they do apprehend, for at the very same time they are asseverating and dogmatizing. Thus even when they declare that they determine nothing, and that to every argument there is an opposite argument, they are actually determining these very points and dogmatizing.

The others reply, We

for they are not like the assertion that the world is spherical. Indeed the latter statement is not certain, but the others are mere admissions. Thus in saying We determine nothing, we are not determining even that.

Again, the dogmatic philosophers maintain that the Sceptics do away with life itself, in that they reject all that life consists in. The others say this is false, for they do not deny that we see; they only say that they do not know how we see. We admit the apparent fact, say they, without admitting that it really is what it appears to be. We also perceive that fire burns; as to whether it is its nature to burn, we suspend our judgement.

We see that a man moves, and that he perishes; how it happens we do not know. We merely object to accepting the unknown substance behind phenomena. When we say a picture has projections, we are describing what is apparent; but if we say that it has no projections, we are then speaking, not of what is apparent, but of something else. This is

But the apparent is omnipotent wherever it goes;

Aenesidemus too in the first book of his Pyrrhonean Discourses says that Pyrrho determines nothing dogmatically, because of the possibility of contradiction, but guides himself by apparent facts. Aenesidemus says the same in his works Against Wisdom and On Inquiry. Furthermore Zeuxis, the friend of Aenesidemus, in his work On Two-sided Arguments, Antiochus of Laodicea, and Apellas in his Agrippa all hold to phenomena alone. Therefore the apparent is the Sceptic’s criterion, as indeed Aenesidemus says; and so does Epicurus. Democritus, however, denied that any apparent fact could be a criterion, indeed he denied the very existence of the apparent.

Against this criterion of appearances the dogmatic philosophers urge that, when the same appearances produce in us different impressions, e.g. a round or square tower, the Sceptic, unless he gives the preference to one or other, will be unable to take any course; if on the other hand, say they, he follows either view, he is then no longer allowing equal value to all apparent facts. The Sceptics reply that, when different impressions are produced, they must both be said to appear[*](i.e. the one has as much right to be called an appearance as the other.); for things which are apparent are so called because they appear. The end to be realized they hold to be suspension of judgement, which brings with it

For in matters which are for us to decide we shall neither choose this nor shrink from that; and things which are not for us to decide but happen of necessity, such as hunger, thirst and pain, we cannot escape,[*](Τὰ δʼ ὅσα περὶ ἡμᾶς οὐκ ἔστιν, ἀλλὰ κατʼ ἀνάγκην, οὐ δυνάμεθα φεύγειν. This is explained by Sext. Emp. Pyrrh. Hyp. i. 29 ὀχλεῖς θαίφαμεν (sc. τὸν σκεπτικὸν) ὑπὸ τῶν κατηναγκα σμένων· For we admit that we feel cold, that we are thirsty, etc.) for they are not to be removed by force of reason. And when the dogmatists argue that he may thus live in such a frame of mind that he would not shrink from killing and eating his own father if ordered to do so, the Sceptic replies that he will be able so to live as to suspend his judgement in cases where it is a question of arriving at the truth, but not in matters of life and the taking of precautions. Accordingly we may choose a thing or shrink from a thing by habit and may observe rules and customs. According to some authorities the end proposed by the Sceptics is insensibility; according to others, gentleness.[*](i.e. a calm, the opposite of an excitable, temperament: cf. Plato, Lys. 211 e πρᾁως ἔχω.)

Timon, says our[*](Ὁ παρʼ ἡμῶν. Reiske took this to mean my fellowcitizen, ὁ τῆς ἡμετέρας πόλεως. Hence Usener inferred that Nicias of Nicaea was the author here used by D. L.; but nothing that we know of this Nicias tends to confirm such a conjecture. In favour of the translation adopted by most scholars it may be urged that Strabo calls the Stoics οἱ ἡμέτεροι, just as Cicero calls the Academics nostri. Even if we accept this meaning, a Sceptic like myself, a further subtlety arises. Is D. L. here speaking in his own person or has he merely transcribed ὁ παρʼ ἡμῶν from a monograph of a Sceptic? Something may be urged on either side; for reasons given in Introd. p. xiii, the former conjecture seems somewhat more probable.) Apollonides of Nicaea in the first book of his commentaries On the Silli, which he dedicated to Tiberius Caesar, was the son of Timarchus and a native of Phlius. Losing his parents when young, he became a stage-dancer, but later

This son was a man of high repute, as we learn from Sotion in his eleventh book. Timon, however, found himself without means of support and sailed to the Hellespont and Propontis. Living now at Chalcedon as a sophist, he increased his reputation still further and, having made his fortune, went to Athens, where he lived until his death, except for a short period which he spent at Thebes. He was known to King Antigonus and to Ptolemy Philadelphus, as his own iambics[*](Possibly the proem of the Silli.) testify.

He was, according to Antigonus, fond of wine, and in the time that he could spare from philosophy he used to write poems. These included epics, tragedies, satyric dramas, thirty comedies and sixty tragedies, besides silli (lampoons) and obscene poems.

There are also reputed works of his extending to twenty thousand verses which are mentioned by Antigonus of Carystus, who also wrote his life. There are three silli in which, from his point of view as a Sceptic, he abuses every one and lampoons the dogmatic philosophers, using the form of parody. In the first he speaks in the first person throughout, the second and third are in the form of dialogues; for he represents himself as questioning Xenophanes of Colophon about each philosopher in turn, while Xenophanes answers him; in the second he speaks of the more ancient philosophers, in the third of the

The first deals with the same subjects, except that the poem is a monologue. It begins as follows[*](Fr. 1 D.):

Ye sophists, ye inquisitives, come ! follow !

He died at the age of nearly ninety, so we learn from Antigonus and from Sotion in his eleventh book. I have heard that he had only one eye; indeed he used to call himself a Cyclops. There was another Timon, the misanthrope.[*](Diels regards the passage from καὶ ἔπη,§ 110, down to Τίμων ὁ μισάνθρωπος,§ 112, as an insertion, disturbing the symmetry of the materials derived from Antigonus of Carystus.)

Now this philosopher, according to Antigonus, was very fond of gardens and preferred to mind his own affairs. At all events there is a story that Hieronymus the Peripatetic said of him, Just as with the Scythians those who are in flight shoot as well as those who pursue, so, among philosophers, some catch their disciples by pursuing them, some by fleeing from them, as for instance Timon.

He was quick to perceive anything and to turn up his nose in scorn; he was fond of writing and at all times good at sketching plots for poets and collaborating in dramas. He used to give the dramatists Alexander and Homer materials for their tragedies.[*](i.e. he collaborated with these two tragic poets, Alexander the Aetolian and Homer of Byzantinum, partly by furnishing them with plots, partly by handing over scenes from unpublished plays of his own, or other similar material.) When disturbed by maidservants and dogs, he would stop writing, his earnest desire being to maintain tranquillity. Aratus is said to have asked him how he could obtain a trustworthy text of Homer, to which he replied, You can, if you get hold of the ancient copies, and not the corrected copies of our day. He used to let his own poems lie about, sometimes

Hence, when he came to read parts of them to Zopyrus the orator, he would turn over the pages and recite whatever came handy; then, when he was half through, he would discover the piece which he had been looking for in vain, so careless was he.[*](Similar carelessness is recorded of Lamartine.) Furthermore, he was so easy-going that he would readily go without his dinner. They say that once, when he saw Arcesilaus passing through the knaves-market, he said, What business have you to come here, where we are all free men? He was constantly in the habit of quoting, to those who would admit the evidence of the senses when confirmed by the judgement of the mind, the line—

Birds of a feather flock together.[*](Usually explained, after Diogenianus, of two notorious thieves, Attagas the Thessalian and Numenius the Corinthian. There may, however, be a sly hit at Pyrrho’s disciple Numenius (supra, § 102). Or merely the birds partridge and woodcock may be meant, not any Mr. Partridge and Mr. Woodcock.)

Asked once by Arcesilaus why he had come there from Thebes, he replied, Why, to laugh when I have you all in full view ! Yet, while attacking Arcesilaus in his Silli, he has praised him in his work entitled the Funeral Banquet of Arcesilaus.

According to Menodotus he left no successor, but his school lapsed until Ptolemy of Cyrene re-established it. Hippobotus and Sotion, however, say that he had as pupils Dioscurides of Cyprus, Nicolochus of Rhodes, Euphranor of Seleucia, and Praÿlus of the

Euphranor had as pupil Eubulus of Alexandria; Eubulus taught Ptolemy, and he again Sarpedon and Heraclides; Heraclides again taught Aenesidemus of Cnossus, the compiler of eight books of Pyrrhonean discourses; the latter was the instructor of Zeuxippus his fellow-citizen, he of Zeuxis of the angular foot (γωνιόπους, Cruickshank), he again of Antiochus of Laodicea on the Lycus, who had as pupils Menodotus of Nicomedia, an empiric physician, and Theiodas of Laodicea; Menodotus was the instructor of Herodotus of Tarsus, son of Arieus, and Herodotus taught Sextus Empiricus, who wrote ten books on Scepticism, and other fine works. Sextus taught Saturninus called Cythenas,[*](Possibly κυδαθηναιεύς, i.e. a member of the well-known Attic deme, into which even Italians with such names as Saturninus might penetrate under the cosmopolitan empire of the Severi.) another empiricist.

Epicurus, son of Neocles and Chaerestrate, was as citizen of Athens of the deme Gargettus, and, as Metrodorus says in his book On Noble Birth, of the family of the Philaidae. He is said by Heraclides[*](i.e. Heraclides Lembos (F.H.G. iii. p. 70).) in his Epitome of Sotion, as well as by other authorities, to have been brought up at Samos after the Athenians had sent settlers there and to have come to Athens at the age of eighteen, at the time when Xenocrates was lecturing at the Academy and Aristotle in Chalcis. Upon the death of Alexander of Macedon and the expulsion of the Athenian settlers from Samos by Perdiccas,[*](Diod. Sic. xviii. 18. 9.) Epicurus left Athens to join his father in Colophon.

For some time he stayed there and gathered disciples, but returned to Athens in the archonship of Anaxicrates.[*](307-306 b.c.) And for a while, it is said, he prosecuted his studies in common with the other philosophers, but afterwards put forward independent views by the foundation of the school called after him. He says himself that he first came into contact with philosophy at the age of fourteen. Apollodorus the Epicurean, in the first book of his Life of Epicurus, says

Hence the point of Timon’s allusion[*](Fr. 51 D.) in the lines:

Again there is the latest and most shameless of the physicists, the schoolmaster’s son[*](The meaning is: a schoolmaster like his father before him. Cf. Dem. De cor.§ 258 ἅμα τῷ πατρὶ πρὸς τῷ διδασκαλεί ῳ προσεδρεύων. From Aristophanes, Acharn. 595-7, it seems that patronymics were used of persons engaged in hereditary occupations.) from Samos, himself the most uneducated of mortals.

At his instigation his three brothers, Neocles, Chaeredemus, and Aristobulus, joined in his studies, according to Philodemus the Epicurean in the tenth book of his comprehensive work On Philosophers; furthermore his slave named Mys, as stated by Myronianus in his Historical Parallels. Diotimus[*](One Diotimus who calumniated Epicurus and was answered by the Epicurean Zeno is mentioned by Athenaeus, xiii. 611 b, as having been put to death.) the Stoic, who is hostile to him, has assailed him with bitter slanders, adducing fifty scandalous letters as written by Epicurus; and so too did the author who ascribed to Epicurus the epistles commonly attributed to Chrysippus.

They are followed by Posidonius the Stoic and his school, and Nicolaus and Sotion in the twelfth book of his work entitled Dioclean Refutations, consisting of twenty-four books; also by Dionysius of Halicarnassus. They allege that he used to go round with his mother to cottages and read charms, and assist his father in his school for a pitiful fee[*](Compare again Dem.De cor.§ 258.); further, that one of his brothers was a pander and