Vitae philosophorum

His voice was extremely powerful, so that the keeper of the gymnasium sent to him and requested him not to shout so loud. To which he replied, Then give me something by which to regulate my voice. Thereupon by a happy hit the man replied in the words, You have a regulator in your audience. His talent for criticizing opponents was remarkable, and he was a formidable controversialist. And for the reasons already given he further declined invitations to dine out. One of his pupils was Mentor the Bithynian, who tried to ingratiate himself with a concubine of Carneades; so on one occasion (according to Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History), when Mentor came to lecture, Carneades in the course of his remarks let fall these lines by way of parody at his expense:

Hither comes an old man of the sea, infallible, like to Mentor in person and in voice.[*](Carneades applies two lines from the Odyssey, namely iv. 384 and (with a change to the masculine participle) ii. 268 or 401.) Him I proclaim to have been banished from this school.

Those on their part made proclamation, and these speedily assembled.[*](Hom. Il. ii. 52.)

He seems to have shown some want of courage in the face of death, repeating often the words, Nature which framed this whole will also destroy it. When he learnt that Antipater committed suicide by drinking a potion, he was greatly moved by the constancy with which he met his end, and exclaimed, Give it then to me also. And when those about him asked What? A honeyed draught, said he. At the time he died the moon is said to have been eclipsed, and one might well say that the brightest luminary in heaven next to the sun thereby gave token of her sympathy.

According to Apollodorus in his Chronology, he departed this life in the fourth year of the 162nd Olympiad[*](129-128 b.c.) at the age of eighty-five years. Letters of his to Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, are extant. Everything else was compiled by his pupils; he himself left nothing in writing. I have written upon him in logaoedic metre as follows[*](Anth. Plan. v. 39.):

Why, Muse, oh why wouldst thou have me censure Carneades? For he is ignorant who knoweth not how he feared death. When wasting away with the worst of diseases, he would not find release. But when he heard that Antipater’s life was quenched by drinking a potion,

Give me too, he cried, a draught to drink. What? pray what? Give me a draught of honeyed wine. He had often on his lips the words, Nature which holds this frame together will surely dissolve it. None the less he too went down to the grave, and he might have got there sooner by cutting short his tale of woes.

It is said that his eyes went blind at night without

He had many other disciples, but the most illustrious of them all was Clitomachus, of whom we have next to speak.

There was another Carneades, a frigid elegiac poet.

Clitomachus was a Carthaginian, his real name being Hasdrubal, and he taught philosophy at Carthage in his native tongue. He had reached his fortieth year when he went to Athens and became a pupil of Carneades. And Carneades, recognizing his industry, caused him to be educated and took part in training him. And to such lengths did his diligence go that he composed more than four hundred treatises. He succeeded Carneades in the headship of the school, and by his writings did much to elucidate his opinions. He was eminently well acquainted with the three sects—the Academy, the Peripatetics, and the Stoics.

The Academics in general are assailed by Timon in the line:

The prolixity of the Academics unseasoned by salt.

Having thus reviewed the Academics who derived from Plato, we will now pass on to the Peripatetics, who also derived from Plato. They begin with Aristotle.