CRATIPPUS

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. crau (from a celtic root meaning "stone"), a region of southern france, comprised in the department of bouches-du-rhone, and bounded w. by the canal from arles to port du bouc and the rhone, n. by the chain of the alpines separating it from an analogous region, the petite crau, e. by the hills around salon and istres, s. by the gulf of fos, an inlet of the mediterranean sea. covering an area of about 200 sq. m., the crau is a low-lying, waterless plain, owing its formation to a sudden inundation, according to some authorities, of the rhone and the durance, according to others of the durance alone. its surface is formed chiefly of stones varying in size from an egg to a man's head; these, mixed with a proportion of fine soil, overlie a subsoil formed of stones cemented into a hard mass by deposits of calcareous mud, beneath which lies a bed of loose stones, once the sea-bed. naturally sterile and poor in lime, the crau is adapted for agriculture by the process of warping, carried out by means of the canal de craponne, which dates from the middle of the 16th century; about one-quarter of the region in the north and east has thus been covered by the rich deposits of the waters of the durance. the soil also responds in places to deep cultivation and the application of artificial manures. by these aids, uncultivated land, which before supplied only rough and scanty pasture for a few sheep, has been fitted for the growth of the vine, olive and other fruits; where irrigation is practicable, water-meadows have been formed. the dryness of the climate is unfavourable to the production of cereals.