Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes, Robert Gregg Bury (Translator), 3.24.218

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[218] So it is that, in regard to justice and injustice and the excellence of manliness, there is a great variety of opinion.

Around all matters of religion and_ theology also, there rages violent controversy.¹ For while the majority declare that gods exist, some deny their existence, like Diagoras of Melos, and Theodorus, and Critias the Athenian.² And of those who maintain the existence of gods, some believe in the ancestral gods, others in such as are constructed in the Dogmatic systems—as Aristotle asserted that God is incorporeal and ‟the limit of heaven,”³ the Stoics that he is a breath which permeates even through things foul, Epicurus that he is anthropomorphic,⁴ Xenophanes that he is an impassive sphere.

Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes. Sextus Empiricus. Robert Gregg Bury (Translator). London. 1933.

Funding provided by Tisch Library, Tufts University.

Current edition First1KGreek

Outlines of Pyrrhonism (English) (Sextus Empiricus, Vol. 1. Bury, Robert Gregg, translator. London: William Heinemann Ltd.; New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1933.)

Editions (1)

Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes First1KGreek (Sextus Empiricus. Sexti Empiricii Opera, Volume 1. Mutschmann, Hermann, editor. Leipzig: Teubner, 1912.) — 3.24.218 focus

[218] οὕτω καὶ τὰ περὶ τῶν δικαίων καὶ ἀδίκων καὶ τοῦ κατὰ τὴν ἀνδρείαν καλοῦ πολλὴν ἀνωμαλίαν ἔχει. Καὶ τὰ περὶ εὐσεβείας δὲ καὶ θεῶν <θεραπείας> πεπλήρωται
πολλῆς διαφωνίας. θεοὺς γὰρ οἱ μὲν πολλοί φασιν εἶναι, τινὲς δὲ οὐκ εἶναι, ὥσπερ οἱ περὶ Δ ιαγόραν τὸν Μήλιον καὶ Θεόδωρον καὶ Κριτίαν τὸν Ἀθηναῖον. καὶ τῶν εἶναι θεοὺς ἀποφηναμένων οἱ μὲν τοὺς πατρίους νομίζουσι θεούς, οἱ δὲ τοὺς ἐν ταῖς δογματικαῖς αἱρέσεσιν ἀναπλασσομένους, ¹ ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης (cf.fr. 26 Rose) μὲν ἀσώματον
εἶπεν εἶναι τὸν θεὸν καὶ πέρας τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, Στωικοὶ (Stoic. fr. I 159 et II 103 Arn.) δὲ πνεῦμα διῆκον καὶ διὰ τῶν εἰδεχθῶν, Ἐπίκουρος (p. 355, 7 Us.) δὲ ἀνθρωπόμορφον, Ξενοθάνης (cf. A33 Diels) δὲ σφαῖραν ἀπαθῆ.

Notes on the current edition

Outlines of Pyrrhonism

1. Cf. for this subject Adv. Phys. i. 13 ff., 50 ff.

2. Diagoras, atomist and poet, circa 420 b.c.; Theodorus, a Cyrenaic, circa 310 b.c.; Critias, orator and poet, one of the ‟Thirty Tyrants” (404 b.c.) of Athens.

3. This definition of God is not in our Aristotle, but cf. De caelo, i. 9, 278 b 14: ‟We are wont to give the name of ‘Heaven’ especially to the outermost and highest (part of the Universe), in which all the Divinity, we say, is situated.” It is this outermost circumference—the abode of Fire, the finest and most divine of elements—which is here termed ‟the limit” (πέρας).

4. Cf. Diog. Laert. vii. 138 f. (Stoics), x. 139 (Epicureans). For Xenophanes cf. i. 225.

Sextus Empiricus Pyrrhoniae Hypotyposes 3.24.218

Robert Gregg Bury (Translator)

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