The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire

by T. R. Glover

Sextus Empiricus

Lucian was not the only man who sought to bring the age back to sound and untroubled thinking. There was a physician, Sextus—known from the school of medicine to which he belonged as Sextus Empiricus—who wrote a number of books about the end of the second century or the beginning of the third in defence of Scepticism. A medical work of his, and a treatise on the Soul are lost, but his Pyrrhonean Sketches and his books Against the Dogmatists remain—written in a Greek which suggests that he was himself a Greek and not a foreigner using the language. Physicists, mathematicians, grammarians, moralists, astrologers, come under his survey, and the particular attention which he gives to the Stoics is a material fact in fixing his date, for after about 200 A.D. they cease to be of importance. His own point of view a short extract from his sketches will exhibit fully enough for our present purpose.

"The aim of the Sceptic is ataraxia [freedom from mental perturbation or excitement] in matters which depend on opinion, and in things which are inevitable restraint of the feelings (metriopátheian). For he began to philosophise in order to judge his impressions (phantasías) and to discover which of them are true and which false, so as to be free from perturbation. But he came to a point where the arguments were at once diametrically opposite and of equal weight; and then, as he could not decide, he suspended judgment (epéschen), and as soon as he had done so, there followed as if by accident this very freedom from perturbation in the region of opinion. For if a man opines anything to be good or bad in its essential nature, he is always in perturbation. When he has not the things that appear to him to be good, he considers himself tortured by the things evil by nature, and he pursues the good (as he supposes them to be); but, as soon as he has them, he falls into even more perturbations, through being uplifted out of all reason and measure, and from fear of change he does everything not to lose the things that seem to him to be good. But the man, who makes no definitions as to what is good or bad by nature, neither avoids nor pursues anything with eagerness, and is therefore unperturbed. What is related of Apelles the painter has in fact befallen the Sceptic. The story goes that he was painting a horse and wished to represent the foam of its mouth in his picture; but he was so unsuccessful that he gave it up, and took the sponge, on which he used to wipe the colours from his brush, and threw it at the picture. The sponge hit the picture and produced a likeness of the horse's foam. The Sceptics then hoped to gain ataraxia by forming some decision on the lack of correspondence between things as they appear to the eye and to the mind; they were unable to do it, and so suspended judgment (epéschen); and then as if by accident the ataraxia followed—-just as a shadow follows a body. We do not say that the Sceptic is untroubled in every way, but we own he is troubled by things that are quite inevitable. For we admit that the Sceptic is cold sometimes, and thirsty, and so forth. But even in these matters the uneducated are caught in two ways at once, viz.: by the actual feelings and (not less) by supposing these conditions to be bad by nature. The Sceptic does away with the opinion that any one of these things is evil in its nature, and so he gets off more lightly even in these circumstances."[[49]]

A view of this kind was hardly likely to appeal to the temper of the age, and the influence of Scepticism was practically none. Still it is interesting to find so vigorous and clear an exponent of the system flourishing in a period given over to the beliefs that Lucian parodied and Apuleius accepted. Sextus, it may be added, is the sole representative of ancient Scepticism whose works have come down to us in any complete form.

One very obscure person of this period remains to be noticed, who in his small sphere gave his views to mankind in a way of his own.

In 1884 two French scholars, MM. Holleaux and Paris were exploring the ruins of Oinoanda, a Greek city in Lycia, and they came upon a number of inscribed stones, most of them built in a wall. What was unusual was that these were neither fragments of municipal decrees nor of private monuments, but all formed part of one great inscription which dealt apparently with some philosophic subject. In June 1895 two Austrian scholars, MM. Heberdey and Kalinka, re-collated the inscription and found some further fragments, and now the story is tolerably clear, and a curious one it is.[[50]]

It appears that the fragments originally belonged to an inscription carved on the side of a colonnade, and they fall into three series according to their place on the wall—one above another. The middle series consists of columns of fourteen lines, the letters 1-½ to 2 centimetres high, fifteen or sixteen in a line,—each column forming a page, as it were; and it extends over some twenty-one or two yards. The lowest series is in the same style. On top is a series of columns added later (as the inscription shows) and cut in letters of 2-½-3 centimetres, generally ten lines to the column—the larger size to compensate for the greater height above the ground, for it was all meant to be read. The inscription begins:—

"Diogenes to kinsmen, household and friends, this is my charge. Being so ill that it is critical whether I yet live or live no longer—for an affection of the heart is carrying me off—if I survive, I will gladly accept the life yet given to me; if I do not survive, DO..."

Diogenes of Oinoanda

There ends a column, and a line or two has been lost at the top of what seems to be the next, after which come the words "a kindly feeling for strangers also who may be staying here," and the incomplete statement which begins "knowing assuredly, that by knowledge of the matters relating to Nature and feelings, which I have set forth in the spaces below...." It is evident that Diogenes had something to say which he considered it a duty to make known. This proves to have been the Epicurean theory of life; and here he had carved up for all to read a simple exposition of the philosophy of his choice.