Book 9
10.60
For his fortitude and contentment in life he was called the Happy Man. He had, too, the capacity of bringing anyone to reason in the easiest possible way. At all events he succeeded in diverting Alexander when he had begun to think himself a god; for, seeing blood running from a wound he had sustained, he pointed to him with his finger and said, See, there is blood and not Ichor which courses in the veins of the blessed gods.Il. v. 340. Plutarch reports this as spoken by Alexander to his friends.Vit. Alex. c. 28. Moreover, on another occasion, when Anaxarchus was drinking Alexander’s health, he held up his goblet and said: One of the gods shall fall by the stroke of mortal man.Euripides, Orestes, 271.
Chapter 11. PYRRHO (c. 360-270 b.c.)
11.61
Pyrrho of Elis was the son of Pleistarchus, as Diocles relates. According to Apollodorus in his Chronology, he was first a painter; then he studied under Stilpo’s son BrysonFor Stilpo’s son Bryson Roeper’s conjecture βρύσωνος ἢ Στίλπωνος (Philolog. xxx. 462) would substitute under Bryson or Stilpo. In any case chronology seems to forbid the supposition that Pyrrho was a pupil of either Stilpo or Bryson.: thus Alexander in his Successions of Philosophers. Afterwards he joined Anaxarchus, whom he accompanied on his travels everywhere so that he even forgathered with the Indian Gymnosophists and with the Magi. This led him to adopt a most noble philosophy, to quote Ascanius of Abdera, taking the form of agnosticism and suspension of judgement. He denied that anything was honourable or dishonourable, just or unjust.i.e. a particular act is no more just than unjust. And so, universally, he held that there is nothing really existent, but custom and convention govern human action; for no single thing is in itself any more this than that.
