Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​Crantor of Soli, who was admired in his own native city, departed for Athens and attended the lectures of Xenocrates while studying together with Polemo. He left behind notes to the number of thirty thousand lines, some of which certain people attribute to Arcesilaus. And they say that when asked what it was that won him over to Polemo, he said that it was hearing him speak neither in too sharp nor in too heavy a tone. Having fallen ill, he retired to the temple of Asclepius and walked about there; and people gathered to him from all sides, thinking not that it was because of sickness, but that he wished to establish a school there. Among these was also Arcesilaus, wishing to be introduced by him to Polemo, although Crantor loved him, as we shall relate in the section on Arcesilaus.

​Moreover, when he recovered, he continued to be a hearer of Polemo, for which he was especially admired. It is also said that he left his estate, amounting to twelve talents, to Arcesilaus. And when asked by him where he wished to be buried, he said: "It is good to be hidden in the recesses of the dear earth." It is also said that he wrote poems, sealed them up, and deposited them in the temple of Athena in his native city. And the poet Theaetetus speaks of him in this way: "Crantor pleased men, and still more he pleased the Muses, and he did not advance far into old age. Earth, do thou receive this sacred man who has died; may he live gently and in abundance even there."

​Crantor admired Homer and Euripides above all others, saying that it was a difficult task to write in standard language in a manner at once tragic and moving. And he would recite the verse from the Bellerophon: "Alas! But why 'alas'? We have suffered only what belongs to mortals." And there are also quoted these verses addressed to Eros, belonging either to the poet Antagoras or to Crantor: "My heart is in doubt, since your lineage is disputed, whether I should call you the first among the ever-living gods, Eros, of all the children whom long ago Erebos and Queen Night bore beneath the waves of broad Ocean;

​or the son of prudent Cypris, or of Gaia, or of the Winds; such are you as you wander among mortals plotting both evil and good; wherefore also your body is of double nature." He was also clever at coining expressions. At any rate, he said that a certain tragic actor had a voice that was "unplaned and full of bark," and that the verses of a certain poet were "full of shavings," and that the theses of Theophrastus had been "written with an oyster shell." The most admired of his books is that On Grief. And he passed away before Polemo and Crates, having fallen ill with dropsy. And our epigram upon him runs as follows: "The worst of diseases overwhelmed you too, Crantor, and thus you descended to the black abyss of Pluto. And you indeed rejoice there, but bereft of your words stand the Academy and Soli, your native land."