  However, there are strong reasons not to read Sextus and Cicero as confirming that Arcesilaus’ commitment to a descriptive version of universal suspension is independent of his anti-Stoic arguments. Even if Arcesilaus developed a notion of suspension (‘epochê’) before his criticisms of the Stoa, premise [11] above conceptualizes it in Stoic terms. It is true that Arcesilaus in Sextus M. 7.156–7 goes beyond the point sufficient to oppose the Stoic—viz., that the wise person does not assent to anything (see [9] above). But he continued the argument because there is a conceptual difference between not assenting and withholding assent (see e.g., Friedman 2013), and because epochê refers to the latter. Withholding assent presupposes a prior examination of evidence and the recognition of an equipollence among the reasons for competing beliefs. (See also Maconi 1988 and Bénatouïl 2011.) As for the evidence of Cicero, even if Lucullus thinks Arcesilaus himself belongs to the group of Academics who say that everything is non-evident, he also accuses Arcesilaus of appealing to the authority of Presocratics to promote his view of inapprehensibility, which crucially presupposes Stoic conditions on knowledge (Academica 2.15). So even Lucullus thinks Arcesilaus’ skepticism is related to his anti-Stoic arguments.