a celebrated Greek philosopher, was a native of Cyrene in Africa, and founder of the third academy. He was so fond of study, that he not only avoided all entertainments, but forgot even to eat at his own table; his maid-fervant Melisba was obliged to put the viands into his hand. He was an antagonist of the Stoics; and applied himself with great eagerness Carneades gerned to refute the works of Chrysippus, one of the most celebrated philosophers of their sect. The power of his eloquence was dreaded even by a Roman senate. The Athenians being condemned by the Romans to pay a fine of 500 talents for plundering the city of Oropus, sent ambassadors to Rome, who got the fine mitigated to 100 talents. Carneades the academic, Diogenes the Stoic, and Critolaus the Peripatetic, were charged with this embassy. Before they had an audience of the senate, they harangued to great multitudes in different parts of the city. Carneades's eloquence was distinguished from that of the others by its strength and rapidity. Cato the elder made a motion in the senate, that these ambassadors should be immediately sent back, because it was very difficult to discern the truth through the arguments of Carneades. The Athenian ambassadors (said many of the senators) were sent rather to force us to comply with their demands, than to solicit them by persuasion; meaning, that it was impossible to resist the power of that eloquence with which Carneades addressed himself to them. According to Plutarch, the youth at Rome were so charmed by the fine orations of this philosopher, that they forsook their exercises and other diversions, and were carried with a kind of madness to philosophy; the humour of philosophising spreading like enthusiasm. This gripped Cato, who was particularly afraid of the subtlety of wit and strength of argument with which Carneades maintained either side of a question. Carneades harangued in favour of justice one day, and the next day against it, to the admiration of all who heard him, among whom were Galba and Cato, the greatest orators of Rome. This was his element; he delighted in demolishing his own work; because it served in the end to confirm his grand principle, that there are only probabilities or resemblances of truth in the mind of man; so that of two things directly opposite, either may be chosen indifferently. Quintilian remarks, that though Carneades argued in favour of injustice, yet he himself acted according to the strict rules of justice. The following was a maxim of Carneades: "If a man privately knew that his enemy, or any other person whose death might be of advantage to him, would come to sit down on grass in which there lurked an asp, he ought to give him notice of it, though it were in the power of no person whatever to blame him for being silent." Carneades, according to some, lived to be 85 years old; others make him to be 90; his death is placed in the 4th year of the 162nd Olympiad.