Sesto Empirico
Sextus Empiricus. — Skeptical philosopher and physician, who lived in the second half of the 2nd century A.D. He belonged to the school of "empirical" physicians, hence his surname. Nothing is known of his life: it is conjectured that he was African, from the fact that Suidas lists some of his works under the name of a "S. Libyan."
Of Sextus Empiricus there remain—his medical writings being lost—three works of the greatest value for the knowledge of Greek skepticism (v.), of which he represents, after Aenesidemus and Agrippa, the final phase. In the *Pyrrhonian Hypotyposes* a fundamental sketch of Pyrrhonism (v.) is outlined, as the title indicates; Bk. I contains a treatment of the conceptual principles and method of the school; Bks. II and III are devoted to the refutation of dogmatism (v.). In the five books *Against the Dogmatists* the same polemic against the "logicians," the "physicists," and the "ethicists" is developed at length. The six books *Against the Professors* (to which in the manuscripts are joined the preceding ones, under the common title *Against the Learned*) subject to skeptical criticism all the representatives of non-philosophical science, mathematicians, astrologers, grammarians, etc.
Sextus Empiricus is not original, but he expounds in clear, though somewhat prolix, form the doctrines of his masters, and may be used as a source, albeit with great caution, even for information about his dogmatic adversaries.
Sextus Julius Africanus
It is very uncertain whether this figure had the praenomen Sextus, which is attributed to him on the basis of a text of Suidas that is moreover corrupted. He himself calls himself, in various places in his work, *Iulius Africanus*.
It would be equally cautious not to insist on his birth at Jerusalem by over-interpreting a papyrus from Oxyrhynchus. But whether he was originally from Palestine or not, he declares himself to be a Jew. The dates of his birth and death are unknown. He must have been a little older than Origen (185-254). He seems to have traveled extensively in the Middle East and to have stayed at the court of Alexander Severus, where he held the office of architect and provided the plan for the imperial library that the emperor had built next to his Baths, not far from the Pantheon. But he also took an interest in the sciences, literature, philosophy, and theology.
His works fall so sharply into two groups, almost contradictory, that Renaissance scholars wondered whether there had not been two Africanuses, one Christian and the other pagan, despite the unanimous testimonies and the evident reality. On the one hand, Africanus is the author of the *Chronographia* (fragments in PG 10, 63-94), the correspondent of Origen in two important letters on points of theological exegesis. This aspect of his activity earns the author great honor for his erudition, the acuteness of his critical sense, and the firmness of his Christian faith. On the other hand, and later, he wrote a work essentially pagan and most curious: the *Cesti* (*Oi Kestoi*), whose title alludes to the magical girdle of Aphrodite, the splendor and mysterious power of which Africanus sought to emulate. This work, composed about 230, represents a kind of encyclopedia in 24 books, of which a fairly large number of lengthy fragments have survived, transmitted through the most varied traditions, including papyri. Written by a Jew and intended chiefly for Jews, the *Cesti* form part of the abundant production of the Diaspora, inclined to syncretism. They constitute, as Suidas says, "a kind of treatise on the sciences, containing various recipes." Magic is intermingled with anecdotes, but also with practical observations; the whole is draped in the bombastic style characteristic of the age of the Second Sophistic.