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 great est of his school. He shared Pompey's flight after Pharsalia. Bru tus, 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. In 44 B.c. the Areopagus in vited 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. A work on divination is attributed to him.
Cicero, De divinatione, i. 3, 32, 50, ii. 48, 52 ; De officiis, i. 1, iii. 2 ; Plutarch, Cicero, 24.