SVF I.69
Stoic: Zeno of Citium · Ancient source: Sextus Empiricus, Adversus mathematicos, Book VII — M 7.151 + 7.153 · Source language: Ancient Greek · Source status: Testimonium
Original — Ancient Greek
ἐπιστήμην καὶ δόξαν καὶ τὴν ἐν μεθορίᾳ τούτων τεταγμένην κατάληψιν ... κατάληψιν δὲ τὴν μεταξὺ τούτων. — ὁ Ἀρκεσίλαος ... δεικνὺς ὅτι οὐδέν ἐστι μεταξὺ ἐπιστήμης καὶ δόξης κριτήριον ἡ κατάληψις.
StoicOs Translation
Knowledge and opinion, and, stationed on the borderland between them, the grasp (katalēpsis) ... and the grasp is what lies between these. — Arcesilaus ... showing that there is no grasp between knowledge and opinion to serve as criterion.
Context
Sextus Empiricus, writing for sceptical purposes around 200 CE, reports the Stoic tripartition — knowledge, opinion, and between them the grasp — and immediately lets Arcesilaus, Zeno's Academic contemporary and rival, attack it. Cicero's Latin parallel (under SVF I.60) attributes the tripartition to Zeno personally.
Greek text verified against H. von Arnim, SVF I (1903), no. 69, p. 20 (scanned page). The ellipses (...) are von Arnim's. Under the same number he prints the Latin slice Cicero, Acad. post. 1.42 (“inter scientiam et inscientiam comprehensionem collocabat...”), presented in full context under SVF I.60. Von Arnim adds the cross-reference “Cf. II n. 90”. M 7.153 reports Arcesilaus' sceptical counter-argument — the words of an opponent, not Stoic doctrine.
What the source actually tells us
A doxographic testimonium in Sextus' wording, with von Arnim's ellipses marking omitted connecting text. The second sentence is Arcesilaus' counter-argument as Sextus reports it — an opponent's voice preserved inside the fragment, clearly distinguished from the Stoic thesis. The attribution of the tripartition to Zeno rests on Cicero's parallel (SVF I.60).
Philosophical meaning
Zeno's middle category is one of his most consequential inventions: between the sage's knowledge and the fool's opinion stands the reliable grasp, available to everyone. It makes progress possible — you need not be wise already to hold something firmly and rightly. Arcesilaus' objection, that no such middle exists, opened the centuries-long debate between Stoa and Academy.
Scholarly uncertainty
Sextus writes four and a half centuries after the debate and compresses both positions; the exact form of Arcesilaus' argument and of Zeno's original tripartition cannot be recovered from this report alone.
Go deeper
- Read SVF I.60 — Cicero's full account of Zeno's epistemology
- Read SVF I.68 — the Greek definitions of knowledge
About this edition
StoicOs Ancient Library is a developing multilingual digital study edition of surviving early Stoic material. The Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta assembled by Hans von Arnim provides the traditional reference framework. StoicOs distinguishes carefully between fragments, testimonia, later reports and interpretation. StoicOs translations are prepared from the surviving ancient-language sources where available.