ABSTRACT
Aenesidemus ‘enumerated some modes’ against the aetiologists (Chapter VII: 159): and attacks on aetiology are central to the Sceptical enterprise. After all, the Dogmatists ‘think a great deal of these things’ (PH 1 180) in their project of penetrating to the hidden heart of things, to a level of reality which will explain the structure of the phenomenal world. Democritus said he would rather discover a single aitiologia, or causal explanation, than be the King of Persia (68 118 DK). Sextus saw that attacking the notion of cause jeopardized many other central Dogmatic concepts, such as those of body, motion and alteration (PH 3 38, 67-8, 103; see Barnes, 1983, 149, 154).
