s, it would be superfluous, it seems to me, to
speak now, for they themselves grant that he is different from
us. The question as to whether he was really a Sceptic or not we
treat more fully in the Memoranda, but here we state briefly
that according to Menodotus and Aenesidemus (for these
especially defended this position) Plato dogmatises when he
expresses himself regarding ideas, and regarding the existence
of Providence, and when he states that the virtuous life is more
to be chosen than the one of vice. If he assents to these things
as true, he dogmatises; or even if he accepts them as more
probable than otherwise he departs from the sceptical character,
since he gives a preference to one thing above another in
trustworthiness or untrustworthiness; for how foreign this is to
us is evident from what we have said before. Even if when he 223
performs mental gymnastics, as they say, he expresses some
things sceptically, he is not because of this a Sceptic. For he
who dogmatises about one thing, or, in short, gives preference
to one mental image over another in trustworthiness or
untrustworthiness in respect to anything that is unknown, is a
Dogmatic in character, as Timon shows by what he said of
Xenophanes. For after having praised Xenophanes in many 224
things, and even after having dedicated his Satires to him, he
made him mourn and say--

"Would that I also might gain that mind profound,
Able to look both ways. In a treacherous path have
I been decoyed,
And still in old age am with all wisdom unwed.
For wherever I turned my view
All things were resolved into unity; all things, alway
From all sources drawn, were merged into nature the same."

Timon calls him somewhat, but not entirely, free from
vanity, when he said--

"Xenophanes somewhat free from vanity, mocker of
Homeric deceit,
Far from men he conceived a god, on all sides equal,
Above pain, a being spiritualised, or intellect."

In saying that he was somewhat free from vanity, he meant that
he was in some things free from vanity. He called him a mocker
of the Homeric deceit because he had scoffed at the deceit in
Homer. Xenophanes also dogmatised, contrary to the assumptions 225
of other men, that all things are one, and that God is grown
together with all things, that He is spherical, insensible,
unchangeable, and reasonable, whence the difference of
Xenophanes from us is easily prov