Pyrrho of Elis is much less well known than the eponymous philosophy he inspired, Pyrrhonism. Diogenes Laertius, in his biography of Pyrrho in Lives of Eminent Philosophers, offers his usual mixture of anecdote, scandal, and unreliable doctrinal information (9.61–70). Thus Pyrrho was said to have had no concern for his own safety and to have been rescued from precipices and oncoming traffic by the timely interventions of his (presumably nonskeptical) friends (9.62). Aenesidemus rejected such fables, "saying that while he did philosophize in accordance with suspension of judgment, he did not act in a heedless manner" (9.62). Such stories, as well as ones presumably designed to exalt his image, such as one that claims that he demonstrated his unworldly indifference by washing pigs (9.66), are apocryphal, but they indicate what others apparently took his skeptical detachment to amount to.

He is also said to...