Clitomachus, called in the Punic language Asdrubal, was a great philosopher.(555) He succeeded the famous Carneades, whose disciple he had been; and maintained in Athens the honour of the Academic sect. Cicero says,(556) that he was a more sensible man, and fonder of study, than the Carthaginians generally are. He wrote several books;(557) in one of which he composed a piece to console the unhappy citizens of Carthage, who, by the ruin of their city, were reduced to slavery. I might rank among, or rather place at the head of, the writers who have adorned Africa, the celebrated Terence; himself singly being capable of reflecting infinite honour on his country by the fame of his productions, if, on this account, Carthage, the place of his birth, ought not to be less considered as his country than Rome, where he was educated, and acquired that purity of style, that delicacy and elegance, which have gained him the admiration of all succeeding ages. It is supposed,(558) that he was carried off when an infant, or at least very young, by the Numidians in their incursions into the Carthaginian territories, during the war carried on between these two nations, from the conclusion of the second, to the beginning of the third Punic war. He was sold for a slave to Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator; who, after giving him an excellent education, gave him his liberty, and called him by his own name, as was then the custom. He was united in a very strict friendship with the second Scipio Africanus, and Lælius; and it was a common report at Rome, that he had the assistance of these two great men in composing his pieces. The poet, so far from endeavouring to stifle a report so advantageous to him, made a merit of it. Only six of his comedies are extant. Some authors, on the authority of Suetonius, (the writer of his life,) say, that in his return from Greece, whither he had made a voyage, he lost a hundred and eight comedies, which he had translated from Menander, and could not survive an accident which must naturally afflict him in a sensible manner; but this incident is not very well founded. Be this as it may, he died in the year of Rome 594, under the consulship of Cneius Cornelius Dolabella, and M. Fulvius, at the age of thirty-five years, and consequently he was born anno 560.