Antiochus of Ascalon

Antiochus of Ascalon studied under Philo of Larissa, the last head of the sceptical New Academy, but broke with him decisively — rejecting the suspension of judgment and proclaiming a return to the positive doctrine of the 'Old Academy' of Plato, Speusippus, and Xenocrates.

He argued that the Academy, the Peripatetics of Aristotle, and even the Stoics were at bottom in agreement, differing more in vocabulary than in substance — an ambitious harmonizing of the schools that set the tone for the centuries to come. His ethics leaned Stoic, his metaphysics Platonic, and his confidence in the possibility of knowledge was complete.

Among his hearers were Cicero, who reports his views at length, and the scholar Varro, so that much of what later Rome knew of Platonism passed through him. With Antiochus the long sceptical interlude ends and the dogmatic revival begins that would flower as Middle Platonism and, in time, Neoplatonism.