Carneades of Cyrene

Carneades was born in Cyrene and journeyed to Athens where he mastered Stoic logic before being elected Scholarch (director) of the Platonic Academy. He radicalized Greek epistemology by formulating probabilistic skepticism (*pithanon*), arguing that while absolute certainty is unattainable, rational probability provides a sound guide for practical human life.

In 155 BCE, dispatched to Rome as an Athenian ambassador alongside Critolaus and Diogenes, he delivered a speech praising justice on one day, and on the next day refuted all his previous arguments with dazzling brilliance, horrifying Cato the Elder and introducing formal philosophical dialectic to the Roman Republic.