 The most obvious explanation for the overall emotional tranquility would seem to be along the following lines. If one adopts the position recommended in the Aristocles passage, one will not hold any definite beliefs, about any object or state of affairs, to the effect that the object or state of affairs really is good, or valuable, or worth seeking—or, on the other hand, bad or to be avoided. (This will be true on either the metaphysical or the epistemological interpretations of the Aristocles passage, and it will be true of Pyrrho, given his answer to the first question, even if the rest is Timon’s development.) Hence one will attach far less importance to the attainment or the avoidance of any particular objects, or the occurrence or non-occurrence of any particular state of affairs, than one would if one thought that these things really did have some kind of positive or negative value; nothing will matter to one to anything like the same extent as it matters to most people. If this is on the right lines, then Pyrrho’s route to ataraxia closely resembles the one described in several places by Sextus Empiricus (PH 1.25–30, 3.235–8, M 11.110–67); the account I have given is in fact modeled after Sextus’ explanation of how suspension of judgement produces ataraxia. Indeed, it is difficult to see how else the process is to be reconstructed. One difference, however, between the practical attitudes of Pyrrho and Sextus is that Sextus attributes an important role to convention in the shaping of one’s behavior; more on this in a moment.