  How does it come about that someone acquires the skeptical skill? Sextus offers an answer in PH I 12. People have become Skeptics because they are seeking tranquillity. Certain people (‘men of talent’ in Annas and Barnes’ translation; ‘smart and energetic people’ in Cooper’s nice gloss (2012: 282)) are ‘troubled by the anomaly in things’ (I 12) and want to take away this ‘trouble’, i.e., become tranquil (the word translated ‘tranquillity’ is etymologically related to the word translated ‘trouble’, and more literally means ‘lack of trouble’). Presumably Sextus has in mind that one might be troubled by the various discrepancies that the world offers, such as this one (taken from PH III 202): ‘among us, tattooing is thought to be shameful and a dishonour, but many Egyptians and Sarmatians tattoo their babies’. By considering these two facts, one has both the impression that tattooing is bad and the impression that it is good: those who pay attention to such anomalies will be ‘puzzled as to which of them they should rather assent to’ (PH I 12 again). So begins the quest for finding the answer and ridding oneself of the irksome ‘trouble’ that such questions induce. Sextus seems to be explaining how it is that someone could come to be investigating questions with the sort of single-mindedness the skeptic has, a single-mindedness which results in the intense scrutiny of all sides of a question. This will in turn explain how it is that anyone would end up with the skeptical skill: this intense scrutiny will lead the scrutiniser to develop skill at coming up with considerations speaking to both sides of a question and evaluating them for convincingness.