1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Cratippus (philosopher)

CRATIPPUS, of Mitylene (1st century B.C.), Peripatetic philosopher, contemporary with Cicero, whose son he taught at Athens, and by whom he is praised in the De officiis as the greatest of his school. He was the friend of Pompey also and shared his flight after the battle of Pharsalia, for the purpose, it is said, of convincing him of the justice of providence. Brutus, while at Athens after the assassination of Caesar, attended his lectures. The freedom of Rome was conferred upon him by Caesar, at the request of Cicero. The only work attributed to him is a treatise on divination, but his reputation may be gauged by the fact that in 44 B.C. the Areopagus invited him to succeed Andronicus of Rhodes as scholarch. He seems to have held that, while motion, sense and appetite cannot exist apart from the body, thought reaches its greatest power when most free from bodily influence, and that divination is due to the direct action of the divine mind on that faculty of the human soul which is not dependent on the body.

Cicero, De divinatione, i. 3, 32, 50, ii. 48, 52; De officiis, i. 1, iii. 2; Plutarch, Cicero, 24.