A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

AENESIDEMUS.
is to shew how a siege should be resisted, the various kinds of instruments to be used, manoeuvres
to be practised, ways of sending letters without
being detected, and without even the bearers knowing about it (c. 31, a very curious one), &c. It
contains a good deal of information on many points
in archaeology, and is especially valuable as containing a large stock of words and technical terms
connected with warfare, denoting instruments, &c.,
which are not to be found in any other work.
From the same circumstance, many passages are
difficult.
The book was first discovered by Simler in the
Vatican library. It was edited first by Isaac
Casaubon with a Latin version and notes, and appended to his edition of Polybius. (Paris, 1609.)
It was republished by Gronovius in his Polybius,
vol. iii. Amsterdam, 1670, and by Ernesti, Leipzig,
1763. The last edition is that of J. C. Orelli,
Leipzig, 1818, with Casaubon's version and notes
and an original commentary, published as a supplement to Schweighaeuser's Polybius. Besides the
Vatican MS. there are three at Paris, on which
Casaubon founded his edition, and one in the Laurentian library at Florence. This last is, according
to Orelli (Praef. p. 6), the oldest of all. The work
contains many very corrupt and mutilated passages.
An epitome of the whole book, not of the fragment now remaining, was made by Cineas, a Thessalian, who was sent to Rome by Pyrrhus, 279,.B. c. (Aelian, Tact. 1.) This abridgment is referred to by Cicero (ad Fam. ix. 25). [A. A.]
AENE'IUS or AENE'SIUS (AivutIos or Aiv'jo-ios), a surname of Zeus, under which he was
worshipped in the island of Cephalenia, where he
had a temple on mount Aenos. (Hes. ap. Schiol.
ad Apeollon. Rhod. ii. 297.) [L. S.]
AENESIDE'MUS (Aivm'sadiejpos), the son of
Pataicus, and one of the body-guards of Hippocrates, tyrant of Gela, was the son of Theron, the
ruler of Agrigentum, in the time of the Persian war.
(Herod. vii. 154, 165.) ETHERON.]
AENESIDE'MUS (Aivroijymos), a celebrated
sceptic, born at Cnossus, in Crete, according to
Diogenes Laertius (ix. 116), but at Aegae, according to Photius (Cod. 212), probably lived a little
later than Cicero. He was a pupil of Heracleides
and received from him the chair of philosophy,
which had been handed down for above three hundred years from Pyrrhon, the founder of the sect.
For a full account of the sceptical system see
PYRRHON. As Aenesidemus differed on many
points from the ordinary sceptic, it will be convenient before proceeding to his particular opinions,
to give a short account of the system itself.
The sceptic began and ended in universal
doubt. He was equally removed from the academic who denied, as from the dogmatic philosopher who affirmed; indeed, he attempted to confound both in one, and refute them by the same
arguments. (Sext. Emp. i. 1.) Truth, he said,
was not to be desired for its own sake, but for the
sake of a certain repose of mind (dtrapaia) which
followed on it, an end which the sceptic best attained in another way, by suspending his judgment (ei-roxsi), and allowing himself literally to
rest in doubt. (i. 4.) With this view he must
travel over the whole range of moral, metaphysical, and physical science. His method is the
comparison of opposites, and his sole aim to prove
that nothing can be proved, or what he termed,

AENESIDEMUS. 33
the mlooOi'veia of things. In common life he may
act upon <pacvJmeiva with the rest of men: nature,
law, and custom are allowed to have their influence; only when impelled to any vehement effort
we are to remember that, here too, there is much
to be said on both sides, and are not to lose our
peace of mind by grasping at a shadow.
The famous iKsa 'rpoTro of the sceptics were a
number of heads of argument intended to overthrow truth in whatever form it might appear.
[PranHoN.] The opposite appearances of the
moral and natural world (Sext. Emp. i. 14), the
fallibility of intellect and sense, and the illusions
produced upon them by intervals of time and space
and by every change of position, were the first
arguments by which they assailed the reality of
things. We cannot explain what man is, we cannot explain what the senses are: still less do we
know the way in which they are acted upon by
the mind (ii. 4-7): beginning with oVidEv dpiSwo,
we must end with oeVmEv Pf AA5ov. We are not
certain whether material objects. are anything but
ideas in the mind: at any rate the different qualities which we perceive in them may be wholly
dependent on the percipient being; or, supposing
them to contain quality as well as substance, it
may be one quality varying with the perceptive
power of the different senses. (ii. 14.) Having
thus confounded the world without and the world
within, it was a natural transition for the sceptic
to confound physical and metaphysical arguments.
The reasonings of natural philosophy were overthrown by metaphysical subtleties, and metaphysics made to look absurd by illustrations only applicable to material things. The acknowledged
imperfection of language was also pressed into the
service; words, they said, were ever varying in
their signification, so that the ideas of which they
were the signs must be alike variable. The leading idea of the whole system was, that all truth
involved either a vicious circle or a petitio principii, for, even in the simplest truths, something
must be assumed to make the reasoning applicable.
The truth of the senses was known to us from the
intellect, but the intellect operated through the
senses, so that our knowledge of the nature of
either depends upon the other. There was, however, a deeper side to this philosophy. Everything we know, confessedly, runs up into something we do not know: of the true nature of cause
and effect we are ignorant, and hence to the
favourite method, dirro i rov els arespov icidAewiv, or
arguing backward from cause to cause, the very
imperfection of human faculties prevents our
giving an answer. We must know what we
believe; and how can we be sure of secondary
causes, if the first cause be wholly beyond us?
To judge, however, from the sketch of Sextus
Empiricus (Pyrrh. Hyp.), it was not this side
of their system which the sceptics chiefly urged:
for the most part, it must be confessed, that they
contented themselves with dialectic subtleties,
which were at once too absurd for refutation, and
impossible to refute.
The causes of scepticism are more fully given
under the article PYRRHON. One of the most remarkable of its features was its connexion with the
later philosophy of the Ionian school. From the failure of their attempts to explain the phenomena of
the visible world, the Ionian philosophers were insensibly led on to deny the order and harmony of