Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism by Mary Mills Patrick
page 27 of 196 (13%)
[2] Zeller _Op. cit._ III. p. 39.

A part of Sextus' books also may have been written in
Alexandria. [Greek: Pros phusikous] could have been written in
Alexandria.[1] If these were also lectures, then Sextus taught
in Alexandria as well as elsewhere. The history of Eastern
literature for the centuries immediately following the time of
Sextus, showing as it does in so many instances the influence of
Pyrrhonism, and a knowledge of the _Hypotyposes_, furnishes us
with an incontestable proof that the school could not have been
for a long time removed from the East, and the absence of such
knowledge in Roman literature is also a strong argument against
its long continuance in that city. It would seem, however, from
all the data at command, that during the years that the
Sceptical School was removed from Alexandria, its head quarters
were in Rome, and that the Pyrrhonean _Hypotyposes_ were
delivered in Rome. Let us briefly consider the arguments in
favour of such a hypothesis. Scepticism was not unknown in Rome.
Pappenheim quotes the remark of Cicero that Pyrrhonism was long
since dead, and the sarcasm of Seneca, _Quis est qui tradat
praecepta Pyrrhonis?_ as an argument against the knowledge of
Pyrrhonism in Rome. We must remember, however, that in Cicero's
time Aenesidemus had not yet separated himself from the Academy;
or if we consider the Lucius Tubero to whom Aenesidemus
dedicated his works, as the same Lucius Tubero who was the
friend of Cicero in his youth, and accordingly fix the date of
Aenesidemus about 50 B.C.,[2] even then Aenesidemus' work in
Alexandria was too late to have necessarily been known to
Cicero, whose remark must have been referred to the old school
of Scepticism. Should we grant, however, that the statements of
DigitalOcean Referral Badge