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

614 CARNEADES.
whose name is probably connected with caro,
flesh, for she was regarded as the protector of the
physical well-being of man. It was especially the
chief organs of the human body, without which
man cannot exist, such as the heart, the lungs,
and the liver, that were recommended to her protection. Junius Brutus, at the beginning of the
commonwealth, was believed to have dedicated to
her a sanctuary on the Caelian hill, and a festival
was celebrated to her on the first of June, which
day was called fabrariae calendae, from beans
(fabae) and bacon being offered to her. (Macrob.
Sat. i. 12; Varro, ap. Nonium, s. v. Mactare;
Ovid, Fast. vi. 101, &c., who however confounds
Cardea with Carna.) [L. S.]
CARNE'ADES (Kapveda'ais). 1. The son of
Epicomus or Philocomus, was born at Cyrene about
the year B. c. 213. He went early to Athens,
and attended the lectures of the Stoics, and learnt
there logic from Diogenes. His opinions, however, on philosophical subjects differed from those
of his master, and he was fond of telling him, " if
I reason right, I am satisfied; if wrong, give
back the mina," which was the fee for the logic
lectures. He was six years old when Chrysippus
died, and never had any personal intercourse with
him; but he deeply studied his works, and exerted
all the energy of a very acute and original mind in
their refutation. To this exercise he attributed his
own eminence, and often repeated the words
El n ' yrap iv Xpvrio-Iros, ohcV d iv?'cyo.
He attached himself as a zealous partizan to the
Academy, which had suffered severely from the
attacks of the Stoics; and on the death of Hegesinus, he was chosen to preside at the meetings of
Academy, and was the fourth in succession from
Arcesilaus. His great eloquence and skill in argument revived the glories of his school; and, defending himself in the negative vacancy of asserting
nothing (not even that nothing can be asserted),
carried on a vigorous war against every position
that had been maintained by other sects.
In the year B. c. 155, when he was fifty-eight
years old, he was chosen with Diogenes the Stoic
and Critolaus the Peripatetic to go as ambassador
to Rome to deprecate the fine of 500 talents which
had been imposed on the Athenians for the destruction of Oropus. During his stay at Rome, he attracted great notice from his eloquent declamations
on philosophical subjects, and it was here that, in
the presence of Cato the Elder, he delivered his
famous orations on Justice. The first oration was
in commendation of the virtue, and the next day
the second was delivered, in which all the arguments of the first were answered, and justice was
proved to be not a virtue, but a mere matter of
compact for the maintenance of civil society. The
honest mind of Cato was shocked at this, and he
moved the senate to send the philosopher home to
his school, and save the Roman youth from his
demoralizing doctrines.
Carneades lived twenty-seven years after this at
Athens, and died at the advanced age of eightyfive, or (according to Cicero) 90, B. c. 129. He is
described as a man of unwearied industry. He
was so engrossed in his studies, that be let his hair
and nails grow to an immoderate length, and was
so absent at his own table (for he would never
dine out), that his servant and concubine, Melissa,
was constantly obliged to feed him. In his old

CARNEADES.
age, he suffered from cataract in his eyes, which
he bore with great impatience, and was so little
resigned to the decay of nature, that he used to
ask angrily, if this was the way in which nature
undid what she had done, and sometimes expressed
a wish to poison himself.
Carneades left no writings, and all that is known
of his lectures is derived from his intimate friend
and pupil, Cleitomachus; but so true was he to his
own principles of witholding assent, that Cleitomachus confesses he never could ascertain what his
master really thought on any subject. He, however, appears to have defended atheism, and consistently enough to have denied that the world
was the result of anything but chance. In ethics,
which more particularly were the subject of his
long and laborious study, he seems to have denied
the conformity of the moral ideas with nature.
This he particularly insisted on in the second oration on Justice, in which he manifestly wished to
convey his own notions on the subject; and he
there maintains that ideas of justice are not derived from nature, but that they are purely artificial
for purposes of expediency.
All this, however, was nothing but the special
application of his general theory, that man did not
possess, and never could possess, any criterion of
truth.
Carneadces argued that, if there were a criterion,
it must exist either in reason (Aoyeos), or sensation
(aeffo8t(ris), or conception ((pavracia). But then
reason itself depends on conception, and this again
on sensation; and we have no means of judging whether our sensations are true or false, whether they
correspond to the objects that produce them, or
carry wrong impressions to the mind, producing false
conceptions and ideas, and leading reason also into
error. Therefore sensation, conception, and reason,
are alike disqualified for being the criterion of truth,
But after all, man must live and act, and must
have some rule of practical life; therefore, although
it is impossible to pronounce anything as absolutely
true, we may yet establish probabilities of various
degrees. For, although we cannot say that any
given conception or sensation is in itself true, yet
some sensations appear to us more true than others,
and we must be guided by that which seems the
most true. Again, sensations are not single, but
generally combined with others, which either confirm
or contradict them; and the greater this combination the greater is the probability of that being
true which the rest combine to confirm; and the
case in which the greatest number of conceptions,
each in themselves apparently most true, should
combine to affirm that which also in itself appears
most true, would present to Carneades the highest
probability, and his nearest approach to truth.
But practical life needed no such rule as this,
and it is difficult to conceive a system more barren
of all help to man than that of Carneades. It is
not, indeed, probable that he aspired to any such
designs of benefiting mankind, or to anything beyond his own celebrity as an acute reasoner and
an eloquent speaker. As such he represented the
spirit of an age when philosophy was fast losing
the earnest and serious spirit of the earlier schools,
and was degenerating to mere purposes of rhetorical display. (Diog. Laert. iv. 62-66; Orelli,
Onom. Tdll. ii. p. 130, &c., where are given all the.
passages of Cicero, in which Carneades is mentioned; Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Math. vii. 1690