Crantor was a Greek philosopher of the Old Academy, born probably about the middle of the 4th century BC, at Soli in Cilicia.

He was a fellow-pupil of Polemo in the school of Xenocrates at Athens, and was the first commentator on Plato. He is said to have written some poems which he sealed up and deposited in the temple of Athens at Soli (Diog. Laërtius iv. 5. 25).

Of his celebrated work On Grief, a letter of condolence to his friend Hippocles on the death of his children, numerous extracts have been preserved in Plutarch's Consolatio ad Apollonium and in the De consolatione of Cicero, who speaks of it (Acad. ~i. 44. 135) in the highest terms (aureolus et ad verbum ediscendus). Crantor paid especial attention to ethics, and arranged "good" things in the following order--virtue, health, pleasure, riches.

See F Kayser, De Crantore Academico (1841); MHE Meier, Opuscula academica, ii. (1863); F Susemihi, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur in der Alexandrinerzeit, i. (1891), p. 118.

The original version of this entry was taken from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.