## 1. Life



Pyrrho appears to have lived from around 365-360 BCE until
around 275-270 BCE (for the evidence see von Fritz (1963), 90).
We have several reports of philosophers from whom he learned, the most
significant (and the most reliable) of which concern his association
with Anaxarchus of Abdera. Alongside Anaxarchus (and several other
philosophers) he allegedly accompanied Alexander the Great on his
expedition to India. We are told that in the course of this expedition
he encountered some "naked wise men"
(*gumnosophistai*); Diogenes Laertius (9.61) claims that his
philosophy developed as a result of this meeting, but it is not clear
what basis, if any, he has for this assertion. In any case, after his
return to Greece Pyrrho did espouse a philosophy that attracted
numerous followers, of whom the most important was Timon of Phlius.
The travel writer Pausanias reports (6.24.5) seeing a statue of him in
the marketplace in Pyrrho's home town of Elis in the
Peloponnese; Diogenes also reports (9.64) that he was made high
priest, and that in his honor philosophers were made exempt from city
taxation. While Pausanias' report is easier to accept at face
value than Diogenes', both suggest that (at least locally) he
achieved considerable celebrity. However, there is no good reason to
believe that a Pyrrhonist 'movement' continued beyond his
own immediate followers; it was not until the first century BCE that
Pyrrhonism became the name of an ongoing philosophical tradition.


## 2. Ancient Sources and the Nature of the Evidence



With the exception of poetry allegedly written while on
Alexander's expedition (which, as far as we can tell, did not
survive that expedition), Pyrrho wrote nothing; we are therefore
obliged to try to reconstruct his philosophy from reports by others.
Unfortunately the reports that we have are fragmentary and, in many
cases, of doubtful reliability. Pyrrho's follower Timon wrote
numerous poems and prose works; but of these only fragments and in
some cases second-hand reports survive. It is likely that much of what
we hear about Pyrrho in later sources also derives indirectly from
Timon, but it is frequently not possible to judge, in individual
cases, whether or not this is so. Other difficulties concerning
Timon's evidence are, first, that he writes as a devotee rather
than as a neutral reporter, and second, that the great majority of
Timon's fragments derive from a poem called *Silloi*
(*Lampoons*), and consist of satirical thumbnail sketches of
other philosophers rather than any kind of direct exposition of
Pyrrho's outlook. (See the entry on Timon, section 2, for
details.) Nevertheless, Timon is clearly the most important and
the most trustworthy source of information about Pyrrho. Of the
evidence from Timon, one piece looks to be especially important.
This is a summary, by the Peripatetic Aristocles of Messene (late 1st
c. BCE), of an account by Timon of what appear to
be Pyrrho's most general philosophical attitudes. It is
widely agreed that this passage must be the centerpiece of any
interpretation of Pyrrho's philosophy. However, its usefulness
for this purpose depends in part on how much of it is actually talking
about *Pyrrho's* attitudes, as opposed to Timon's own
developments or expansions of them. As we shall see, this is one of
many difficulties in interpreting the passage.



With the exception of a very few snippets of information, the only
other source of evidence on Pyrrho that is close to contemporary is
Antigonus of Carystus, a biographer of the mid-third century BCE.
Diogenes Laertius, whose life of Pyrrho is our major source of
biographical anecdotes, frequently cites Antigonus, and is probably
indebted to him in many places even when he does not cite him;
Antigonus is also mentioned by Aristocles, and is likely to be the
origin of much or even most of the surviving biographical material on
Pyrrho. But Antigonus needs to be handled even more carefully than
Timon. He was not a philosopher, and there is no reason to think that
he was capable of or particularly interested in comprehending
philosophical nuances. Nor is it clear that accuracy was high on his
list of priorities; on the contrary, what we know about him suggests
that he was a purveyor of sensationalist gossip rather than a reliable
historian. His account probably did contain genuine information about
Pyrrho's demeanor and activities; but it would certainly be
unwise to take his anecdotes as a group on trust.



Cicero refers to Pyrrho about ten times, and Cicero is, in general, a
responsible reporter of other people's views. Unfortunately his
information about Pyrrho appears to be very incomplete, and, as we
shall see, the impression he conveys of him may very well be
inaccurate. With one exception, he never mentions him except in
conjunction with the famously non-orthodox Stoics Aristo and
(sometimes) Herillus, and the remarks in question always concern the
same one or two points in ethics; it looks as if his knowledge of
Pyrrho derives almost entirely from a single source that conveyed
little or nothing about Pyrrho individually. In addition, a number of
authors in later antiquity make isolated comments about Pyrrho. But
since these comments postdate the rise of the later Pyrrhonist
movement, there is often room for suspicion as to whether they reflect
genuine information about Pyrrho himself, as opposed to the later
philosophy that took his name.



Even given the difficulty referred to above, any attempt to interpret
Pyrrho's philosophy must pay close attention to the summary of
Timon in Aristocles. If the entire passage is summarizing the
views of Pyrrho (as Timon understood them), it clearly takes
precedence, in detail and trustworthiness, over the remaining
evidence -- *pace* Green (2017), who proposes a more holistic
approach. If, on the other hand, much of the passage conveys the views
of Timon, and only part of it the views of Pyrrho, the holistic
approach has more to recommend it, despite the paucity of the
remaining evidence. Even on this assumption, however, the Aristocles
passage remains as important as anything else, and to this we now
turn.


## 3. The Aristocles Passage



A word, first, about the provenance and evidential value of the
Aristocles passage. Several chapters from book 8 of Aristocles'
*Peri philosophias* (*On Philosophy*) appear in
quotation in the *Praeparatio evangelica* of Eusebius, the
fourth-century bishop of Caesarea. These chapters expound, and then
attack from an Aristotelian perspective, a number of philosophies that
impugn the reliability of one or other of our cognitive faculties.
Among these Aristocles counts Pyrrhonism, as represented by Pyrrho
himself and by the initiator of the later Pyrrhonist tradition,
Aenesidemus; Aristocles speaks of Aenesidemus (first century BCE,
q.v.), as recent, and is apparently not aware of any subsequent
members of the Pyrrhonist tradition. The chapter on Pyrrhonism opens
with a brief summary of the early Pyrrhonist outlook, as reported by
Timon, who refers to Pyrrho (14.18.1-5).



This convoluted transmission might lead one to doubt how much
authentic information can be extracted from the passage. But there is
no reason, first, to doubt Eusebius' explicit claim to be
quoting Aristocles verbatim. Aristocles is not quoting Timon verbatim;
some of the vocabulary in this passage is clearly reminiscent of
Aristocles' own vocabulary in other chapters. However, other
terms in the passage are quite distinct both from Aristocles'
own normal usage and from any of the terminology familiar to us from
later Pyrrhonism, yet were in use prior to Timon's day; it seems
easiest to account for these as authentic reproductions of
Timon's own language. In addition, the frequent mention of Timon
either by name or by the word *phesi*, 'he
says', suggests that Aristocles is taking pains to reproduce the
essentials of his account as faithfully as possible. And finally,
Aristocles' other chapters, where we are in a position to check
his summaries against other evidence of the views being summarized,
suggest that he is in general a reliable reporter of other
people's views, even views to which he himself is strongly
opposed--or at least, that he is reliable when he has access to
systematic written expositions of those views, as seems to be the case
here. As for Timon's reliability as a source for Pyrrho's
views, we cannot be sure, but we cannot do better; he is clearly
closer to Pyrrho than any other source who discusses him.
However, as already noted, there is a further question concerning how
far the passage is a report of Pyrrho's ideas and how far it gives
us Timon's creative development of them.



Even aside from that question, the interpretation of the
Aristocles passage is fraught with controversy. It follows that the
character of Pyrrho's thinking is, at its very core, a matter
for sharp disagreement. The present survey will begin by assuming that
the passage is all about Pyrrho, laying out the two main
alternatives (given this assumption) and exploring the
consequences of each. (Numerous other readings besides these two have
been proposed; in particular, the interpretation of Svavarsson (2004)
is an intriguing, though arguably unstable, hybrid of the two. But it
is fair to say that these two are the ones that have commanded by far
the most scholarly attention.) It will then explain why some scholars
have questioned this assumption, and what difference this would
make to our understanding of Pyrrho and of Timon's
relation to him. First, then, on the assumption that the whole
passage is Timon's summary of Pyrrho's thought:



Timon is reported as telling us that in order to be happy, one must
pay attention to three connected questions: first, what are things
like by nature? second, how should we be disposed towards things
(given our answer to the first question)? and third, what will be the
outcome for those who adopt the disposition recommended in the answer
to the second question? And the passage then gives us answers to
each of the three questions in order.



The answer to the question "what are things like by
nature?" is given by a sequence of three epithets; things are
said to be *adiaphora* and *astathmeta* and
*anepikrita*. Taken by themselves, these epithets can be
understood in two importantly different ways: they may be taken as
characterizing how things are (by nature) in themselves, or they may
be taken as commenting on human beings' lack (by our nature) of
cognitive access to things. *Adiaphora* is normally translated
'indifferent'. But this might be taken as referring either
to an intrinsic characteristic of things--namely that, in
themselves and by nature, they possess no differentiating features
-- or to our natural inability to discern any such features. In
the latter case 'undifferentiable' might be a more
perspicuous translation. (Beckwith (2011) plausibly connects the focus
on differentiating features, or the lack of them, with the
Aristotelian notion of differentiae; on either of the readings to be
explored, Aristotle's picture of the world and of our ability to
understand it would indeed be a prime example of the kind of view from
which Pyrrho is anxious to distance himself.) Similarly,
*astathmeta* might mean 'unstable' or
'unbalanced', describing an objective property of things;
or it might mean 'not subject to being placed on a
balance', and hence 'unmeasurable', which would
again place the focus on our cognitive inabilities. And
*anepikrita* might mean 'indeterminate', referring
to an objective lack of any definite features, or
'indeterminable', pointing to an inability on our part to
determine the features of things. The statement as a whole, then, is
either answering the question "what are things like by
nature?" by stating that things are, in their very nature,
indefinite or indeterminate in various ways -- the precise nature
of the thesis would be a matter for further speculation--or by
stating that we human beings are not in a position to pin down or
determine the nature of things. Let us call these the metaphysical and
the epistemological interpretations respectively.



It is clear that the metaphysical interpretation gives us a Pyrrho who
is not in any recognizable sense a sceptic. Pyrrho, on this
interpretation, is issuing a declaration about the nature of things in
themselves--precisely what the later Pyrrhonists who called
themselves sceptics were careful to avoid. On the epistemological
interpretation, on the other hand, Pyrrho is very much closer to the
tradition that took his name. There is still some distance between
them. To say that we *cannot* determine the nature of things
-- as opposed to saying that we have so far failed to determine
the natural features of things--is already a departure from the
sceptical suspension of judgement promoted by Sextus Empiricus. And to
put it, as on this reading Pyrrho does put it, by saying that
*things* are indeterminable, is a further departure, in that it
does attribute at least one feature to things in themselves --
namely, being such that humans cannot determine them. Nevertheless,
the epistemological interpretation clearly portrays Pyrrho as a
forerunner--a naive and unsophisticated forerunner, perhaps
-- of later Pyrrhonist scepticism, whereas the metaphysical
interpretation puts him in a substantially different light.



The natural way to try to choose between these two interpretations is
to see which of them fits best with the logic of the passage as a
whole. Unfortunately, a neutral decision on this does not seem be
possible. According to the manuscripts, the phrase that
follows the words we have been discussing reads "*for
this reason* (*dia touto*) neither our sensations nor our
opinions tell the truth or lie". On the metaphysical
interpretation, the idea would be that, since things are in
their real nature indeterminate, our sensations and opinions, which
represent things as having certain determinate features, are neither
true nor false. They are not true, since reality is not the way they
present it as being. It might then seem that they are false. But
if reality is indeterminate because it is constantly *changing*
(as the sensible world is sometimes portrayed, for example, in Plato),
then one might say that our perceptions of the fleeting, temporary
features of things are *not* simply false. Because these
features are temporary and fleeting, they do not belong to the real
nature of things, so the perceptions do not qualify as
true; but (assuming our senses are functioning normally) they are
features the things do actually manifest on particular occasions.



As for the epistemological interpretation, some scholars have
suggested that the manuscripts are in error at this point, and that
what the text should say is "*on account of the fact
that* (*dia to*) neither our sensations nor our opinions
tell the truth or lie". The change is justified on linguistic
grounds; it is alleged that the text in the manuscripts as they stand
is not acceptable Greek. The considerations for and against this
proposal are technical, and debate has yielded no consensus on this
question. However, it is clear that if one does make this small
alteration to the text, the direction of the inference is reversed;
the point about our sensations and opinions now becomes a reason for
the point about the nature of things, not an inference from it. And
this, it has been argued, points towards the epistemological
interpretation. The idea would then be that, since our sensations and
opinions fail to be consistent deliverers of true reports (or, for
that matter, false reports) about the world around us, there is no
prospect of our being able to determine the nature of things. However,
even if we retain the manuscript text, the epistemological reading may
still be possible (so Green (2017)). The idea would be that, in order
for our sensations and opinions to tell the truth or lie, they would
have to do two things: 1) present an appearance of things and 2)
present this appearance *as how things really are*. But since
we are not able to determine the latter (as we were just told in the
statement about the nature of things), our sensations and opinions
cannot do this; they can only register appearances, and that is not
enough for them to tell either truths or falsehoods.



The immediate inference from the statement about the nature of things,
then, is not decisive. And the remainder of the Aristocles
passage can be also read so as to fit with either the
metaphysical or the epistemological reading of his answer to the
question about the nature of things. The Aristocles passage continues
with the answer to the second question, namely the question of the
attitude we should adopt given the answer to the first question. We
are told, first, that we should not trust our sensations and opinions,
but should adopt an unopinionated attitude. On the epistemological
reading, the significance of this is obvious. But on the metaphysical
reading, too, we have already been told that our sensations and
opinions are not true, which is presumably reason enough for us not to
trust them; and the unopinionated attitude that is here recommended
may be understood as one in which one refrains from positing any
definite characteristics as inherent in the nature of
things--given that their real nature is wholly indefinite. (To
the objection that this thesis of indefiniteness is itself an opinion,
it may be replied that *doxa*, 'opinion', is
regularly used in earlier Greek philosophy, especially in Parmenides
and Plato, to refer to those opinions--misguided opinions, in the
view of these authors--that take on trust a view of the world as
conforming more or less to the way it appears in ordinary experience.
In this usage, the claim that reality is indefinite would not be a
(mere) opinion, but would be a statement of the truth.)



The passage now introduces a certain form of speech that is supposed
to reflect this unopinionated attitude. We are supposed to say
"about each single thing that it no more is than is not or both
is and is not or neither is nor is not". There are a number of
intricate questions about the exact relations between the various
parts of this complicated utterance, and especially about the role and
significance of the 'both' and 'neither'
components. But it is clear that this too is susceptible of being read
along the lines of either of the two interpretations introduced above.
On the metaphysical interpretation, we are being asked to adopt a form
of words that reflects the utter indefiniteness of the way things are;
we should not say of anything that it *is* any particular way
any more than that it is *not* that way (with 'is'
being understood, as commonly in Greek philosophy, as shorthand for
'is *F*', where *F* stands for any arbitrary
predicate). On the epistemological interpretation, we are being asked
to use a manner of speaking that expresses our suspension of judgement
about how things are. Sextus Empiricus specifically tells us that
'no more' (*ou mallon*) is a term used by the
sceptics to express suspension of judgement, and its occurrence in the
Aristocles passage can be taken as an early example of the same type
of usage.



Finally, in answer to the third question, we are told that the result
for those who adopt the unopinionated attitude just recommended is
first *aphasia* and then *ataraxia*. *Ataraxia*,
'freedom from worry', is familiar to us from later
Pyrrhonism; this is said by the later Pyrrhonists to be the result of
the suspension of judgement that they claimed to be able to induce.
The precise sense of *aphasia* is less clear. Beckwith (2011)
actually argues that the transmitted text is erroneous, and that we
should instead read *apatheia*, "lack of passion".
This is an attractive suggestion; *apatheia* is indeed a term
used not infrequently of Pyrrho's untroubled attitude (see
section 5), whereas a reference to *aphasia* would be
unparalleled in the other evidence on Pyrrho. However, the proposal is
inevitably speculative, and *aphasia* is a term in use in later
Pyrrhonism; it seems worth trying to elucidate it on the assumption
that the transmitted text is correct. It might mean
'non-assertion', as in Sextus--that is, a refusal to
commit oneself to definite alternatives; or it might mean, more
literally, 'speechlessness', which could in turn be taken
to be an initial reaction of stunned silence to the radical position
with which one has been presented (an uncomfortable reaction that is
subsequently replaced by *ataraxia*--the passage does say
that *aphasia* comes first and *ataraxia* comes later).
But the decision between these two ways of understanding the term is
independent of the broader interpretive issues bearing upon the
passage as a whole. For some form of 'non-assertion' is
clearly licensed by either the metaphysical or the epistemological
interpretation; and on either interpretation, the view proposed might
indeed render someone (initially) uncomfortable to the point of
'speechlessness'. The important point, though, is that
*ataraxia* is the end result; and this links back to the
introductory remark to the effect that the train of thought to be
summarized has the effect of making one happy.



We have, then, two major possibilities. On the one hand, Pyrrho can be
read as advancing a sweeping metaphysical thesis, that things are in
their real nature indefinite or indeterminate, and encouraging us to
embrace the consequences of that thesis by refusing to attribute any
definite features to things (at least, as belonging to their real
nature) and by refusing to accept at face value (again, as revelatory
of the real nature of things) those myriad aspects of our ordinary
experience that represent things as having certain definite features.
Or, on the other hand, Pyrrho can be read as declaring that the nature
of things is inaccessible to us, and encouraging us to withdraw our
trust (and to speak in such a way as to express our withdrawal of
trust) in ordinary experience as a guide to the nature of things. As
noted earlier, the second, epistemological interpretation makes
Pyrrho's outlook a great deal closer to that of the later
Pyrrhonists who took him as an inspiration. But that is not in itself
any reason for favoring this interpretation over the other,
metaphysical one. For on either interpretation Pyrrho is said to
promise *ataraxia*, the later Pyrrhonists' goal, and to
promise it as a *result* of a certain kind of withdrawal of
trust in the veracity of our everyday impressions of things; the
connection between these two points aligns Pyrrho with the later
Pyrrhonists, and sets him apart from every other Greek philosophical
movement that preceded later Pyrrhonism. The fact that this later
sceptical tradition took Pyrrho as an inspiration is therefore readily
understandable whichever of the two interpretations is correct (or
whichever they thought was correct). It is also true that, on the
metaphysical interpretation of the passage, the grounds on which
Pyrrho advanced his metaphysical thesis of indeterminacy are never
specified; this too, like the precise character of the thesis itself,
must be a matter for speculative reconstruction. But Aristocles only
purports to be giving the key points of Timon's summary; the
lack of detail, though disappointing, would not be surprising.



So far we have assumed that the Aristocles passage is supposed to
represent the thought of Pyrrho. But, as noted earlier, some scholars
have questioned that assumption (see especially Brunschwig
(1994), Marchand (2018)). Their reason is that there is only one place
in the Aristocles passage that reads "Timon says that Pyrrho says
..."; this is the threefold statement about the nature of things.
Elsewhere Aristocles says "Timon says", but nowhere else are we
specifically told that Timon is conveying the thought of Pyrrho.
Admittedly Aristocles introduces Pyrrho as one of those who question
our ability to know things, but he may have thought that Timon's own
(written) ideas are the closest we can get to Pyrrho's (unwritten)
ideas. Hence it is not obvious that anything beyond the threefold
statement about the nature of things should actually be attributed to
Pyrrho himself. Of course, when Aristocles says "Timon says", he
*may* have meant this as short for "Timon says Pyrrho says",
but he may also have intended to distinguish between the contributions
of Pyrrho and of Timon.



If we limit Pyrrho's contribution in this way, what difference does it
make? There is still the question whether the statement about the
nature of things is about how things are in themselves or about
our inability to grasp them. But in this case, all the mention of
sensations and opinions, of their truth or falsehood, and of what we
should say belongs to Timon, not to Pyrrho. And this opens the
possibility that the main philosophical outlook expressed in the
Aristocles passage, whether one reads it metaphysically or
epistemologically, is Timon's construction, building on a single idea
of Pyrrho's that may have been rather less broad in scope or ambitious
in character. In particular, as we shall see, much of the other
evidence on Pyrrho seems to depict him as focused on questions of
value, questioning our characterizations of things as good or bad
and doubting whether our views on such matters are stable or
reliable. His statement of the "indifferent" nature of things, as
reported in the Aristocles passage, may also have been of an
evaluative kind: things do not really -- or, we cannot tell
whether things really -- have the positive or negative evaluative
qualities we accord them.


## 4. Other Reports on Pyrrho's General Approach



The other evidence bearing upon Pyrrho's central philosophical
attitudes does nothing to settle the dispute between these various
possible interpretations of the Aristocles passage. A number of texts
explicitly or implicitly represent Pyrrho's outlook as
essentially identical to the sceptical outlook of the later
Pyrrhonists. However, all of these texts postdate the rise of later
Pyrrhonism itself, and none of them contains anything like the level
of detail of the Aristocles passage; there is no particular reason to
suppose that any of them represents a genuine understanding of Pyrrho
as distinct from the later Pyrrhonists. There are also a few texts
that appear to offer a picture of Pyrrho's thought that is
congenial to the metaphysical interpretation. The most significant of
these is a passage from near the beginning of Diogenes Laertius'
life of Pyrrho (9.61); Pyrrho, we are told, "said that nothing
is either fine or ignoble or just or unjust; and similarly in all
cases that nothing is the case in reality (*meden einai
tei aletheiai*), but that human beings do everything
by convention and habit; for each thing is no more this than
that". This looks as if it is attributing to Pyrrho a
metaphysical thesis, and a thesis according to which things have no
definite features; it does not seem to be portraying Pyrrho as an
advocate of suspension of judgement. However, the passage is
undoubtedly in some way confused. For immediately beforehand we are
told that Pyrrho was the one who initiated the type of philosophy
consisting of "inapprehensibility and suspension of
judgement", which sounds epistemic; and the previously quoted
passage is then cited as confirmation of this. In addition, while
"nothing is the case in reality" and "each thing is
no more this than that" sound wholly general, Diogenes'
examples are all in the domain of values, which ties in with the
possibility that Pyrrho's statement about the nature of things,
in the Aristocles passage, was only about values and that most of that
passage represents Timon's views rather than
Pyrrho's. This passage of Diogenes, then, cannot be used as
support for any particular understanding of Pyrrho.


## 5. Reports on Pyrrho's Demeanor and Lifestyle



Most of the remaining evidence about Pyrrho has to do with his
practical attitudes and behavior. There are a number of biographical
anecdotes, and there are a few fragments of Timon that purport to
depict Pyrrho's state of mind. Some of the biographical
anecdotes are clearly polemical inventions. For example, Diogenes
(9.62) reports Antigonus as saying that Pyrrho's lack of trust
in his senses led him to ignore precipices, oncoming wagons and
dangerous dogs, and that his friends had to follow him around to
protect him from these various everyday hazards. But he then reports
the dissenting verdict of Aenesidemus, according to which Pyrrho was
perfectly capable of conducting himself in a sensible manner. This
reflects a longstanding ancient dispute as to whether it is possible
to live if one radically abandons common-sense attitudes to the world.
Antigonus has transformed a hostile criticism of Pyrrho--that, if
one really were to adopt the attitudes he recommends, one
*would* be unable consistently to live as a sane human being
-- into an account of how Pyrrho actually did act; but there is
no reason to take this seriously as biography. (It does, however,
raise the question of what it means to mistrust the senses--as
the Aristocles passage tells us that either Timon or Pyrrho
did--if this is to be consistent with self-preservation in
one's ordinary behavior; we shall return to this point at the
end of this section.)



But there are many other anecdotes, preserved in Diogenes and
elsewhere, that cannot be dismissed in this fashion. The dominant
impression they convey as a group is of an extraordinary impassivity
or imperturbability; with rare exceptions (which he himself is
portrayed as regretting), Pyrrho is depicted as maintaining his calm
and untroubled attitude no matter what happens to him. (The exceptions
have led Pyrrho's outlook to be labeled
"aspirationalism"; see Ribeiro (2022). But while his
attainment of tranquility was admittedly not perfect, the picture we
get is of someone who was truly exceptional in this respect.) This
extends even to extreme physical pain--he is reported not to have
flinched when subjected to the horrific techniques of ancient
surgery--but it also encompasses dangers such as being on a ship
in a storm. (This is not to say that he did not avoid such troubles if
he could, as suggested by the apocryphal stories mentioned in the
previous paragraph; it is just to say that he did not lose his
composure in the face of life's inevitable hardships.) There is
another aspect to this untroubled attitude as well. In numerous
anecdotes Pyrrho is shown as unconcerned with adhering to the normal
conventions of society; he wanders off for days on end by himself, and
he performs tasks that would normally be left to social inferiors,
such as housework and even washing a pig. Here, too, the suggestion is
that he does not care about things that ordinary people do care about
-- in this case, the disapproval of others. (The passage from
Diogenes quoted in the previous section, according to which Pyrrho
held "that human beings do everything by convention and
habit" is not necessarily in conflict with this; by 'human
beings' Pyrrho might have meant *ordinary* human beings,
among whom he would not have included himself.)



The fragments of Timon also emphasize Pyrrho's exceptional
tranquility, and add a further, more philosophical dimension to it.
Several fragments suggest that this tranquility results from his not
engaging in theoretical inquiry like other philosophers, and with his
not engaging in debate with those philosophers. Other thinkers are
perturbed by their need to discover how the universe works, and their
need to prevail in arguments with their rivals; Pyrrho is unconcerned
about any of this.



Clearly it would be foolish to accept every detail of this composite
account. Timon's picture is no doubt idealized, and the
biographical material surely includes a measure of embellishment.
Collectively, however, these fragments and anecdotes add up to a
highly consistent portrait; it does not seem overconfident to take
this at least as reflecting an ideal towards which Pyrrho strived, and
which he achieved to a sufficient degree to have attracted notice.



What connections can be drawn between this portrait of Pyrrho's
demeanor and the philosophy expounded in the Aristocles passage? What
we have here, plainly, is a fuller specification of the
*ataraxia* that the Aristocles passage promised as the outcome
of the process of responding in the recommended way to the three
questions. (And it confirms that, even if the process of reaching
*ataraxia*, as explained in the Aristocles passage, was largely
Timon's rather than Pyrrho's, the ideal of
*ataraxia* itself was one to which Pyrrho adhered.) But
*why* should thinking as Pyrrho did, according to that passage,
yield *ataraxia*, and why should this outcome take the specific
form suggested by the material discussed in this section? Now is a
convenient point to address these questions (as we did not do in
initially examining the Aristocles passage). We may distinguish the
overall emotional tranquility depicted in the biographical material
and the particular tranquility, derived from the avoidance of
theoretical inquiry, that is emphasized in the fragments of Timon.



The most obvious explanation for the overall emotional tranquility
would seem to be along the following lines. If one adopts the position
recommended in the Aristocles passage, one will not hold any
definite beliefs, about any object or state of affairs, to the effect
that the object or state of affairs really is good, or valuable, or
worth seeking--or, on the other hand, bad or to be avoided. (This
will be true on either the metaphysical or the epistemological
interpretations of the Aristocles passage, and it will be true of
Pyrrho, given his answer to the first question, even if the rest is
Timon's development.) Hence one will attach far less importance to the
attainment or the avoidance of any particular objects, or the
occurrence or non-occurrence of any particular state of affairs, than
one would if one thought that these things really did have some kind
of positive or negative value; nothing will matter to one to anything
like the same extent as it matters to most people. If this is on the
right lines, then Pyrrho's route to *ataraxia* closely
resembles the one described in several places by Sextus Empiricus
(*PH* 1.25-30, 3.235-8, *M*
11.110-67); the account I have given is in fact modeled after
Sextus' explanation of how suspension of judgement produces
*ataraxia*. Indeed, it is difficult to see how else the process
is to be reconstructed. One difference, however, between the practical
attitudes of Pyrrho and Sextus is that Sextus attributes an important
role to convention in the shaping of one's behavior; more on
this in a moment.



As for the avoidance of theoretical inquiry and debate, if Pyrrho was
primarily a moralist and the Aristocles passage mostly contains
Timon's ideas, such inquiry and debate would simply have been
outside Pyrrho's sphere of interest. But if the Aristocles
passage as a whole represents Pyrrho's own thought, it is fair
to assume that he will have regarded such inquiry and debate as
troublesome because it is necessarily fruitless and interminable. If
the real nature of things is indeterminable by us, as the
epistemological interpretation would have it, then to attempt to
determine the nature of things, and to provide cogent grounds for the
superiority of one's own theories, is to attempt the impossible;
such matters are simply beyond our grasp. But if, as the metaphysical
interpretation would have it, the world is in its real nature
indefinite, then one is also attempting the impossible, though for a
different reason; one is attempting to determine a fixed character for
things that inherently lack any fixed character. Of course, the thesis
that reality is indefinite is itself a definite statement. But it
follows from this statement that any attempt to establish fixed and
definite characteristics for specific items in the universe is doomed
to failure. And it seems to be this kind of theoretical inquiry that
Timon represents Pyrrho as eschewing; as one fragment puts it
(addressing Pyrrho), "you were not concerned to inquire what
winds hold sway over Greece, from where everything comes and into what
it passes" (Diogenes Laertius 9.65). On this reading, then,
Pyrrho's avoidance of inquiry and debate resembles the disdain
for physical speculation that is apparent in some writings of Plato
(*Phaedo* for example); physical speculation is fruitless
because the physical world is not susceptible to rational inquiry.



Here another difference may be discerned from the Pyrrhonism of Sextus
Empiricus. For although Sextus certainly does not claim to have
definite answers of his own concerning the nature of things, he has no
qualms about engaging with his opponents in debate, or about pitting
them against one another. Indeed, the Pyrrhonism of Sextus depends on
a constant interplay of competing arguments on as many topics as
possible. One's suspension of judgement results from one's
experience of the 'equal strength' (*isostheneia*)
of the competing considerations on all sides of a given issue; but
this requires that one be regularly exposed to such competing
considerations, and the works of Sextus are themselves bountiful
sources for this. Sextus may agree with Pyrrho that such debates are
interminable, but they have an important role in later Pyrrhonist
practice nonetheless. Pyrrho's own practice is quite different,
because his *ataraxia* flows not from an ongoing practice of
intellectual juggling, but from a *conclusion* about the nature
of things, as reported in the Aristocles passage. As we have seen,
this conclusion may be interpreted in several different ways, but
however we interpret it, it is a firm view of his.



We have seen that Pyrrho was unconcerned, or aspired to be
unconcerned, about things that most of us care about very deeply. But
how does one make any decisions at all, if one adopts this kind of
attitude? Unless we are to believe the stories of Pyrrho as a madman
depending on his friends to rescue him from precipices and dogs, we
are entitled to expect an answer to this question. There is some
evidence to suggest that the answer proposed--if not by Pyrrho
himself, then at least by Timon--was that one relies on the
appearances. If this is correct, we have another link, at least at a
general level, with the Pyrrhonism of Sextus, for whom appearances are
what he calls the "criterion of action". One difference,
as mentioned earlier, is that Sextus lists laws and customs as one of
the four main varieties of appearances that one may use to guide
one's behavior; on Sextus' account, then, certain courses
of action will appear to one as desirable or undesirable given that
they are approved or disapproved of by the prevailing mores. But
Pyrrho seems to have been thoroughly unconventional in some aspects of
his behavior. It is impossible to say specifically what kinds of
phenomena were included for him and Timon under the heading of
'the appearances' -- or whether they had anything
very precise in mind here. Nevertheless, it looks as if the early or
proto-Pyrrhonist answer to the question of how one acts and makes
decisions is that one does so in light of the way things appear to
one. Depending on how we read the Aristocles passage, this might
amount to "in light of the characteristics that things seem to
have (but, for all we know, may not really have)", or it
might amount to "in light of the temporary and contingent
characteristics that things manifest on any given occasion (but that
are no part of how they *really are*, since how they really are
is indefinite)". In either case, the way in which one mistrusts
sensations and common-sense opinions, as the Aristocles passage
recommends, is not that one pays no attention to them in one's
everyday behavior; one mistrusts them simply in that one does not take
them as a guide to the underlying nature of things.


## 6. "The Nature of the Divine and the Good"



There is one further, highly problematic fragment of Timon that seems
to belong in the area of practical philosophy. This is a set of four
lines of verse that make reference to "the nature of the divine
and the good". There is no consensus on how to translate these
lines, and different translations yield very different consequences
for interpretation. The first two lines can be rendered either




|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| (A) | "For I will say, as it appears to me to be,

A word of truth, having a correct standard:" |
| or |  |
| (B) | "For I will say, as it is plain to me that it is,

A word of truth, having a correct standard:" |



The second two lines can be rendered either




|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| (C) | "That the nature of the divine and the good is eternal,

From which a most even-tempered life for a man is derived." |
| or |  |
| (D) | "That the nature of the divine and the good is at any time

That from which life becomes most even-tempered for a man." |



There are numerous other disputes over the translation, but these
alternatives put on display most of the central options for
interpretation.



The lines are quoted by Sextus Empiricus (*M* 11.20); there is
no further trace of them in the surviving record. The context in which
Sextus introduces them shows that he is inclined to understand the
first couplet according to reading (A) rather than reading( B); but he
suggests that he is not sure about this. The speaker into whose mouth
Timon put these lines is never identified, but it has generally been
assumed to be Pyrrho.



If one understands the second couplet according to reading (C), then
the speaker is apparently endorsing a position that attributes
definite natures to things; and this appears flatly inconsistent with
the Pyrrho of the Aristocles passage, on any of the readings we
have considered. The tension is especially bad if one reads the first
couplet according to reading (B), in which case the speaker is
insisting that he is in possession of the truth. But even on reading
(A), where the effect is to weaken the assertion to one about what
appears to the speaker to be the case, the statement about "the
nature of the divine and the good" seems strikingly out of
keeping with the rest of what we hear about Pyrrho's philosophy.
It has been suggested that Pyrrho made an exception, in the case of
the divine and the good, to his general prohibition on attributing
definite natures to things; but it is hard to see the motivation for
such a move, and this interpretation has not been generally accepted.
It is true that Cicero speaks of Pyrrho as holding that virtue is the
sole good, and that no distinctions of value are to be drawn among
things other than virtue and vice. However, as was mentioned earlier,
Cicero always attributes this view to Pyrrho alongside the unorthodox
Stoic Aristo of Chios; he never gives any details about Pyrrho's
thinking specifically. We know from other sources that Aristo did hold
this position; and, as we have seen, there is good reason to think
that Pyrrho did refrain quite generally from attributing positive or
negative value to ordinary objects of concern (things other than
virtue and vice), which is one part of the position Cicero attributes
to him and Aristo. So it looks as if Cicero has been misled (probably
by the sketchiness of the information in his source) into thinking
that Pyrrho agreed with Aristo in both parts of his position rather
than in just one part. At any rate, Cicero cannot be regarded as
offering any credible support for an interpretation of Pyrrho that has
him believing in a natural good; again, this is just too discordant
with the remainder of the evidence.



Reading (D) of Timon's second couplet (which is due, with minor
modifications, to Burnyeat (1980)) is intended to eliminate the
troublesome reference to an eternal real nature. According to this
interpretation, the phrase "the nature of the divine and the
good" refers simply to a characteristic that is attributed to
Pyrrho, and labeled by poetic hyperbole as 'divine', in
another fragment of Timon, namely his extraordinary tranquility; the
couplet as a whole, then, is saying that tranquility is the source of
an even-tempered life. And if one combines this with the less dogmatic
reading (A) of the first couplet, this yields a set of remarks that
are not obviously in conflict with anything else in the record on
Pyrrho.



The acceptability of the translation in reading (D) is not beyond
question. There is also some question whether the claim that
tranquility is the source of an even-tempered life is anything more
than vacuous. However, if one assumes that Pyrrho is the speaker of
these lines, then this interpretation or something close to it seems
to be the only way to rescue his thought (as reported by Timon) from
inconsistency. Another possibility, an interpretatively less
burdensome one, is to drop the assumption that Pyrrho is the speaker;
in this case, there is no reason to assume that the thought expressed
by the lines must be consistent with what we know of Pyrrho's
philosophy. But if one takes this option, one must devise an
alternative explanation for why Timon would have written these
lines--including some account of who else the speaker might be.
This challenge has recently been taken up in Clayman (2009), chapter
2. Clayman argues that the speaker is Timon himself, and that the
lines serve a programmatic function at the opening of the poem; in
light of parallel passages in other early Hellenistic poetry, the
reference to truth is understood as an allusion to poetic
verisimilitude rather than to anything philosophically problematic.
Finally, it has been suggested (in Svavarsson 2002) that
*muthon*, rendered in both readings (A) and (B) by
"word", should rather be understood as "myth"
in the sense of "fiction" (and "of truth"
linked instead, as is linguistically quite possible, with
"standard"). In this case, again, there is no difficulty
in understanding the second couplet as expressing a dogmatic position;
indeed, such a reading is only to be expected, since the position is
being debunked, not advocated. Green (2017) has extended
Svavarsson's suggestion by proposing that "word of
truth" and "correct standard" are to be understood
sarcastically rather than at face value, making fun of other
thinkers' belief in these things (which would also render the
thought less dogmatic; it would not simply be a declaration of
falsehood). But whether the word *muthos*, all by itself, can
carry this weight of significance--or whether, if that is what
Timon had intended, he would not have chosen some less ambiguous means
of expressing it--is open to question. It is fair to say that no
resolution of these matters is in sight.


## 7. Influences on Pyrrho



Many different philosophical antecedents have been claimed for Pyrrho.
Since we know very little about which philosophical currents Pyrrho
may have been acquainted with, such claims are bound to be in large
measure speculative. There are, however, a couple of exceptions to
this; as noted at the outset, Pyrrho was associated with Anaxarchus
and was reported to have encountered some unnamed Indian thinkers. The
little that we know of Anaxarchus seems to suggest that his philosophy
had a good deal in common with Pyrrho's. Diogenes Laertius
(9.60) ascribes to him an attitude of *apatheia* and
*eukolia*, 'freedom from emotion' and
'contentedness'; as noted earlier, *apatheia* is
used in some sources to describe Pyrrho's attitude as well, and
the combination of the two terms seems to describe something close to
the state cultivated by Pyrrho. We also hear from Sextus Empiricus
that Anaxarchus "likened existing things to stage-painting and
took them to be similar to the things which strike us while asleep or
insane" (*M* 7.88). This has often been taken as an early
expression of a form of epistemological scepticism. But it may also be
taken as an ontological comment on the insubstantiality of the world
around us; it is *things* (as opposed to our impressions of
things) that are assimilated to stage-sets and the contents of dreams
and fantasies. Either way, the remark looks like an anticipation of
the position expounded in the Aristocles passage; the first
reading conforms to the epistemological interpretation of that
passage, and the second to the metaphysical interpretation. It
appears, then, that Pyrrho may have borrowed to a considerable extent
from Anaxarchus, especially if the Aristocles passage as a whole
represents Pyrrho's thought.



We do not know the identity of the "naked wise men" whom
Pyrrho met in India, or what they thought. There are reports of other
meetings between Indian and Greek thinkers during Alexander's
expedition, and these tend to emphasize the Indians'
extraordinary impassivity and insensitivity to pain and hardship. It
is not unlikely that Pyrrho, too, was impressed by traits of this
kind. Though precedents for his ideal of *ataraxia* exist in
earlier Greek philosophy as well, his reported ability to withstand
surgery without flinching is exceptional in the Greek context (and
quite distinct from anything in later Pyrrhonism); if we believe this
story, it is tempting to explain it by way of some form of training
from the Indians. Some scholars have sought to establish more detailed
links between the thought of the Aristocles passage and various
currents in ancient Indian philosophy; and Beckwith (2015) finds in
Pyrrho an authentic representative of early Buddhism. But there is at
least room for debate about how far these similarities really go. From
an opposing perspective, some have suggested that the linguistic
barriers would have ruled out an interchange of any great
philosophical subtlety between the Indians and Pyrrho. But this may be
overly pessimistic; the expedition lasted a number of years, and some
people manage to learn new languages remarkably quickly.



Beyond these figures with attested connections to Pyrrho, it is
plausible to suppose a certain influence on Pyrrho from Democritus.
Pyrrho is reported to have had a special admiration for Democritus
(Diogenes Laertius 9.67, citing Pyrrho's associate Philo);
Democritus is one of the few philosophers besides Pyrrho himself who
seems to escape serious criticism in Timon's *Lampoons*;
and Anaxarchus belonged in the tradition of thinkers stemming from
Democritus. The influence may have been mainly in the ethical area;
Democritus, too, had an ethical ideal that is recognizably a
forerunner to Pyrrho's *ataraxia*. If one adopts the
epistemological interpretation of Pyrrho's philosophy, one may
see an additional area of influence in Democritus' sceptical
pronouncements about the prospects for knowledge of the world around
us.



Alternatively, if one interprets Pyrrho along metaphysical lines, one
may be inclined to look to Plato and the Eleatics as possible
influences. Timon's verdicts on these figures in the
*Lampoons* are at least partially favorable; and, as was hinted
at earlier on, the dim view of sensibles that is suggested by a number
of Plato's dialogues--but also anticipated by the
Eleatics--seems to have something in common with Pyrrho's
view of reality (on the metaphysical interpretation) as indeterminate.
The difference, of course, is that Pyrrho does not suggest any higher
level of reality such as Plato's Forms or the Eleatic Being.


## 8. Pyrrho's Influence



Pyrrho's relation to the later Pyrrhonists has already been
discussed. Given the importance of Pyrrhonism in earlier modern
philosophy, Pyrrho's indirect influence may be thought of as
very considerable. But beyond his being adopted as a figurehead in
later Pyrrhonism--itself never a widespread philosophical
movement -- Pyrrho seems to have had very little impact in the
ancient world after his own lifetime. Both Cicero and Seneca refer to
Pyrrho as a neglected figure without a following, and the surviving
testimonia do not contradict this impression. It is possible that he
had some influence on the form of scepticism adopted by Arcesilaus and
other members of the Academy; the extent to which this is so is
disputed and difficult to assess. It is also possible that the
Epicureans, whose aim was also *ataraxia*, learned something
from Pyrrho; there are indications of an association between Pyrrho
and Nausiphanes, the teacher of Epicurus. But if so, the extent of the
Epicureans' borrowing was strictly limited. For them,
*ataraxia* is to be attained by coming to understand that the
universe consists of atoms and void; and the Epicureans'
attitude towards the senses was anything but one of mistrust.