lt. Since
the Sceptic accuses Heraclitus of having rashly dogmatised,
presenting on the one hand the doctrine of 'conflagration' and
on the other that 'contradictory predicates are in reality
applicable to the same thing.'"[2] "It is absurd, then, to say
that this conflicting school is a path to the sect with which it
conflicts. It is therefore absurd to say that the Sceptical
School is a path to the philosophy of Heraclitus."[3]

[1] _Hyp._ I. 211.

[2] _Hyp._ I. 212.

[3] _Hyp._ I. 212.

This is not the only place in the writings of Sextus which
states that Aenesidemus at some time of his life was an advocate
of the doctrines of Heraclitus. In no instance, however, where
Sextus refers to this remarkable fact, does he offer any
explanation of it, or express any bitterness against
Aenesidemus, whom he always speaks of with respect as a leader
of the Sceptical School. We are thus furnished with one of the
most difficult problems of ancient Scepticism, the problem of
reconciling the apparent advocacy of Aenesidemus of the
teachings of Heraclitus with his position in the Sceptical
School.

A comparison with each other of the references made by Sextus
and other writers to the teachings of Aenesidemus, and a
consideration of the result, gives us two pictures of
Aenesidemus which conflict most decidedly with each other. We
have on the one hand, the man who was the first to give
Pyrrhonism a position as an influential school, and the first to
collect and present to the world the results of preceding
Sceptical thought. He was the compiler of the ten Tropes of
[Greek: epoche], and perhaps in part their author, and the
author of the eight Tropes against aetiology.[1] He develops his
Scepticism from the standpoint that neither the senses nor the
intellect can give us any certain knowledge of reality.[2] He
denied the possibility of studying phenomena as signs of the
unknown.[3] He denied all possibility of truth, and the reality
of motion, origin and decay. There was according to his teaching
no pleasure or happiness, and no wisdom or supreme good. He
denied the possibility of finding out the nature of things, or
of proving the existence of the gods, and finally he declared
that no ethical aim is possible.

[1] _Hyp._ I. 180.

[2] Photius 170, B. 12.

[3] _Adv. Math._ VIII. 40.

The picture on the other hand, presented to us by Sextus and
Tertullian, is that of a man with a system of belief