1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sextus Empiricus

SEXTUS EMPIRICUS (2nd and 3rd centuries A.D.), physician and philosopher, lived at Alexandria and at Athens. In his medical work he belonged to the “methodical” school (see Asclepiades), as a philosopher, he is the greatest of the later Greek Sceptics. His claim to eminence rests on the facts that he developed and formulated the doctrines of the older Sceptics, and that he handed down a full and, on the whole, an impartial account of the members of his school. His works are two, the Pyrrhonian Hypotyposes and Against the Mathematici (ed. Fabricius, Paris, 1621, and Bekker, Berlin, 1842).

See Brochard, Les Sceptiques grecs (1887); Pappenheim, Lebensverhältnisse des Sextus Empiricus (Berlin, 1875); Jourdain, Sextus Empiricus (Paris, 1858); Patrick, Sextus Empiricus and the Greek Sceptics (1899, with trans. of Pyrrh. Hyp. i.); also Scepticism.