Carneădes

, a philosopher of Cyrene in Africa, founder of a sect called the third or new academy. The A then i ans sent him with Diogenes the Stoic, and Critolaus the Peripatetic, as amba adors to Rome, B.C. 155. The Roman youth were extremely fond of the company of these learned philosophers; and when Carneades, in a speech, had given an accurate and judicious di ertation upon justice, and in another speech confuted all the arguments he had advanced, and apparently given no existence to the virtue he had so much commended, a report prevailed all over Rome, that a Grecian was come who had so captivated by his words the rising generation, that they forgot their usual amusements, and ran mad after philosophy. When this reached the ears of Cato the censor, he gave immediate audience to the A then i an amba adors in the senate, and dismi ed them in haste, expre ing his apprehensions of their corrupting the opinions of the Roman people, whose only profe ion, he sternly observed, was arms and war. Carneades denied that anything could be perceived or understood in the world, and he was the first who introduced a universal suspension of a ent. He died in the 90th year of his age, B.C. 128. Cicero , Letters to Atticus , bk. 12 , ltr. 23 ; On Oratory , bks. 1 & 2.— Pliny , bk. 7 , ch. 30 .— Lac tanti us , bk. 5 , ch. 14 .— Valerius Maximus , bk. 8 , ch. 8 .