Carneades became scholarch of the Academy (Plato's school) sometime before 155 BCE, when he was sent to Rome along with the leaders of the Stoa and the Peripatos (Aristotle's school) to represent the interests of Athens before the senate. It was during the embassy to Rome that the most notorious episode in his life took place. According to tradition, Carneades delivered public lectures on succeeding days, defending justice on the first and arguing that it is a form of folly on the second day.

He was renowned in antiquity above all for the argumentative virtuosity that he displayed in the skeptical examination of views of other philosophers. For this he was indebted to the example of Arcesilaus, who had inaugurated the skeptical turn in the Academy in the third century BCE, which saw the examination of other schools' theories, especially the Stoa's, replace the elaboration...