The Lives and Opinions of Eminent PhilosophersDiogenes Laertius
Philosophy
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
Diogenes Laertius
Philosophers, Ancient -- Biography; Philosophy, Ancient
VI. But there were ten people of the name of Crates. The first was a
poet of the old comedy; the second was an orator of Tralles, a pupil of
Isocrates; the third was an engineer who served under Alexander; the
fourth a Cynic, whom we shall mention hereafter; the fifth a Peripatetic
philosopher; the sixth the Academic philosopher, of whom we are speaking;
the seventh a grammarian of Malos; the eighth a writer in geometry; the
ninth an epigrammatic poet; the tenth was an Academic philosopher, a
native of Tarsus.
LIFE OF CRANTOR.
I. Crantor, a native of Soli, being admired very greatly in his own
country, came to Athens and became a pupil of Xenocrates at the same time
with Polemo.
II. And he left behind him memorials, in the shape of writings, to the
number of 30,000 lines, some of which, however, are by some writers
attributed to Arcesilaus.
III. They say of him that when he was asked what it was that he was so
charmed with in Polemo, he replied, “That he had never heard him speak in
too high or too low a key.”
IV. When he was ill he retired to the temple of Æsculapius, and there
walked about, and people came to him from all quarters, thinking that he
had gone thither, not on account of any disease, but because he wished
to establish a school there.
V. And among those who came to him was Arcesilaus, wishing to be
recommended by him to Polemo, although he was much attached to him, as we
shall mention in the life of Arcesilaus. But when he got well he became a
pupil of Polemo, and was excessively admired on that account. It is said,
also, that he left his property to Arcesilaus, to the amount of twelve
talents; and that, being asked by him where he would like to be buried,
he said:—
It is a happy fate to lie entombed
In the recesses of a well-lov’d land.
VI. It is said also that he wrote poems, and that he sealed them up in
the temple of Minerva, in his own country; and Theætetus the poet wrote
thus about him:—
Crantor pleased men; but greater pleasure still
He to the Muses gave, ere he aged grew.
Earth, tenderly embrace the holy man,
And let him lie in quiet undisturb’d.
And of all writers, Crantor admired Homer and Euripides most; saying that
the hardest thing possible was to write tragically and in a manner to
excite sympathy, without departing from nature; and he used to quote this
line out of the Bellerophon:—
Alas! why should I say alas! for we
Have only borne the usual fate of man.
The following verses of Antagoras the poet are also attributed to
Crantor; the subject is love, and they run thus:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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