264 ///-3 to ///-4
of the 162nd Olympiad [129-128 B.c.] at 85 years of age. His letters to
Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia are extant. As to the rest, his pupils wrote
up his views. He himself left nothing.
Numenius in Eusebius Prep. Ev. bk. xiv, ch.
vii-viii, 736d-739d (selections)
[III-4]
(736d) "After these [Lacydes, Evander, Hegesinus of Pergamumr
Carneades inherited leadership of the school and founded the third Acad-
emy. In arguments he used the same approach as Arcesilaus. For he
himself practiced the method of arguing on both sides of a question and
demolished all the claims made by others. He set himself apart from
[ Arcesilaus] only in his account of suspension of judgement, saying that it
was impossible for a human being to suspend judgement about absolutely
everything, that there was a difference between 'non-evident' and 'un-
graspable,' and that everything was ungraspable, but that not everything
was non-evident. (737a) Carneades was acquainted with Stoic theories
and by his eristic opposition to them grew in fame, by aiming not at the
truth, but at what appeared to be plausible to the many. As a result, he
provided much discomfort to the Stoics." This, then, is what Numenius
too writes about him.
(737b) "Carneades, having succeeded Hegesinus, did not take care to
defend what he should have, namely, the [distinction between which of]
his doctrines were settled and which had changed, but rather, referring
everything back to Arcesilaus, no matter if what he had said was better
or worse, renewed the conflict [between Sceptics and Stoics] after a long
interval." And next he (737c) adds, "Indeed, Carneades used to advance
and put forward contradictory claims and he brought to the conflict
subtle twists of argument of various sorts; he would deny, affirm, and
contradict both sides. Whenever he needed something impressive for his
arguments, he would rise up, roaring like a rushing river over-flowing
both its banks, and would come crashing down and sweep away his
hearers with his tumultuous voice. Sweeping aside the others, he never
led himself astray, which was not the case with Arcesilaus. For he, while
defrauding his frenzied companions with his quackery, did not notice
that he had first deceived himself: because he had refuted absolutely
everything, he had not (737d) noticed that he had come to believe that
what he was saying was true.
Carneades was, with regard to Arcesilaus, an evil on top of an evil,
- The text of Eusebius mistakenly gives Aristippus of Cyrene as the successor of Evander.
The correct version is given below at 737b and by Diogenes Laertius (4.60).
