person
Arcesilaus
Arcesilas
also: Arcesila
Founder of the sceptical (New) Academy; Cicero, though himself an Academic, asks this disruptive school to keep silent during the constructive argument of De Legibus.
Reading notes
- On the Ends of Good and Evil §2.2 Arcesilas
Arcesilaus of Pitane (c. 316-241 BC), head of the Academy and founder of its skeptical (Middle) phase. Cicero credits him with reviving the Socratic method of arguing against whatever thesis a hearer proposed.
- On the Ends of Good and Evil §5.94 your own Arcesilas
Arcesilas founded the sceptical New Academy but, as a pupil of Polemo, is claimed by Cicero as 'one of ours'. The anecdote of his gout shows him bearing pain in the Peripatetic-Stoic manner while still wishing not to feel it.