SESTO EMPIRICO. – Skeptical philosopher and physician, who lived in the second half of the second century A.D. He belonged to the school of the “empirical” physicians, whence his appellation. Nothing is known about his life; it is conjectured that he was African on the basis of the fact that Suidas lists some of his works under the name of a “S. Libycus.”
Of S. E. there remain—his medical writings having been lost—three works of the greatest value skepticism (v.), of which, after Aenesidemus and Agrippa, S. represents the final phase. In the Πυρρώνανα ὑποτυπώσεις, as the title indicates, Pyrrhonism (v.) is set forth; Book I contains an exposition of the school’s conceptual principles and method; Books II and III are dogmatism (v.). In the five books Πρὸς θνηματικός the same polemic against the “logicians,” the “physicists,” and the “ethicists” is developed at length. The six books Against the Learned (to which the preceding books are joined in the manuscripts under the common title Πρὸς μαθηματικός) subject to skeptical criticism all the representatives of the sciences that are not strictly philosophical—mathematicians, astrologers, grammarians, and so forth.
S. E. is not original, but presents the doctrines of his masters in a clear, though somewhat prolix, form, and may be used as a source, albeit with great caution, also for obtaining information about his dogmatic opponents.