Crantor: Polemo

¹ Crantor was a native of Soli, being admired very greatly in his own country

He came to Athens and became a pupil of Xenocrates at the same time with Polemo.

² He left behind him memorials as writings with 30,000 lines.

Some of which, however, are by some writers attributed to Arcesilaus.

³ He was so charmed with Polemo because: “he had never heard him speak in too high or too low a key.”

⁴ When he was ill, he retired to the temple of Æsculapius.

There people came to him from all quarters, thinking that he had gone there to establish a school.

⁵ Arcesilaus came to him wishing to be recommended by him to Polemo, although he was much attached to him.

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.

⁶ 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:— My mind is much perplexed; for what, O Love, Dare I pronounce your origin? May I Call you chiefest of the immortal Gods, Of all the children whom dark Erebus And Royal Night bore on the billowy waves Of widest Ocean? Or shall I bid you hail, As son of proudest Venus? or of Earth? Or of the untamed winds? so fierce you rove, Bringing mankind sad cares, yet not unmixed With happy good, so two-fold is your nature.

He was very ingenious at devising new words and expressions; accordingly, he said that one tragedian had an unhewn (ἀπελέκητος) voice, all over bark; and he said that the[163] verses of a certain poet were full of moths; and that the propositions of Theophrastus had been written on an oyster shell. But the work of his which is most admired is his book on Mourning.

VII. He died before Polemo and Crates, having been attacked by the dropsy.

We have written this epigram on him:—

The worst of sicknesses has overwhelmed you, O Crantor, and you thus did quit the earth, Descending to the dark abyss of Hell. Now you are happy there; but all the while The sad Academy, and your native land Of Soli mourn, bereaved of your eloquence.