Carneades: C.214BC-129 BC

Carneades seems to have been something of a scraggly fellow, neglecting his personal appearance because of devotion to study. Perhaps because of this he declined invitations to dine out; he seems to have a love interest however, for Diogenes Laertius reports that he expelled a student from the Academy for being too close to one of his concubines. While reporting very little of Carneades’ philosophy, he does take the time to remark on the length of Carneades’ fingernails, and the fact that he died during an eclipse of the moon. Diogenes also tells us that Carneades suffered from night blindness, wrote letters to the King of Cappadocia, and that he was a brilliant orator and debater. Carneades was considered the most important Greek philosopher of the 2nd century BC, and his reputation at that time was such that it is said that teachers of rhetoric in Athens would cancel their classes to go and hear him lecture.