  Sextus Empiricus says that the Epicureans attacked the liberal arts because they “contributed nothing to the perfection of wisdom” (M 1.1). He incorporates Epicurean critiques—for which he appears to have used Epicurean sources including, perhaps, Zeno of Sidon and even Philodemus himself—into his own attacks on the liberal arts. Sextus’ attacks routinely distinguish between highly technical, theoretically oriented versions of the arts and lower, more practical versions: ‘higher grammar’ treats the nature of linguistic elements and studies the interpretation and judgment of poetry and prose, while ‘lower grammar’ or ‘grammatistic’ deals with the simple art of reading and writing (1.44–5); a technical art of music is the science of melodies, tones, rhythms, etc., not the simple experience of music (6.1–4). It is only the higher versions of the arts that Sextus attacks, while the lower versions he considers ‘useful for life’.