  It is clear that any interpretation of Arcesilaus must take into account both his reputation as a master dialectician who deployed Socrates’ method ruthlessly against his philosophical contemporaries, and his notorious advocacy of inapprehensibility and universal suspension. Given the contradictory nature and scarcity of the evidence, it is perhaps not surprising that modern critics do not agree about the success of the ‘dialectical’ or various ‘doctrinal’ interpretations of Arcesilaus or about the consistency of the very different kinds of skepticism the latter propose. But further progress is not ruled out, since it is open to us to offer more sophisticated philosophical elaborations of those forms of skepticism and to test their historical plausibility by appealing to the diverse, but better attested traditions in the later Academy.