[2] Sextus gives us no hint of the authorship of the two
Tropes. Ritter attributes them to Menodotus and his followers,
and Zeller agrees with that opinion,[3] while Saisset thinks
that Agrippa was also the author of these,[4] which is a strange
theory to propound, as some of the material of the five is
repeated in the two, and the same man could certainly not appear
as an advocate of five, and at the same time of two Tropes.
[1] Saisset _Op. cit._ p. 237.
[2] _Hyp._ I. 178.
[3] Zeller III. 38; Ritter IV. 277.
[4] Saisset _Op. cit._ p. 231.
The two Tropes are founded on the principle that anything must
be known through itself or through something else. It cannot be
known through itself, because of the discord existing between
all things of the senses and intellect, nor can it be known
through something else, as then either the _regressus in
infinitum_ or the _circulus in probando_ follow.[1] Diogenes
Laertius does not refer to these two Tropes.
In regard to all these Tropes of the suspension of judgment,
Sextus has well remarked in his introduction to them, that they
are included in the eighth, or that of relation.[2]
[1] _Hyp._ I. 178-179.
[2] _Hyp._ I. 39.
_The Tropes of Aetiology_. The eight Tropes against causality
belong chronologically before the five Tropes of Agrippa, in the
history of the development of sceptical thought. They have a
much closer connection with the spirit of Scepticism than the
Tropes of Agrippa, including, as they do, the fundamental
thought of Pyrrhonism, _i.
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