CLITOMACHUS, Greek philosopher, was a Carthaginian originally named Hasdrubal, who came to Athens about the middle of the 2nd century B.C. at the age of twenty-four. He made himself well acquainted with Stoic and Peripatetic philosophy; but he studied principally under Carneades, whose views he adopted, and whom he succeeded as chief of the New Academy in 129 B.C. He made it his business to spread the knowledge of the doctrines of Carneades, who left nothing in writing himself. Clitomachus’ works were some four hundred in number; but we possess scarcely anything but a few titles, among which are De sustinendis assensionibas (Περἱ έποχῆς, “ on suspension of judgment ”) and Περἱ αἱρέσεων (an account of various philosophical sects). In 146 he wrote a treatise to console his cour1trymen after the ruin of their city, in which he insisted that a wise man ought not to feel grieved at the destruction of his country. Cicero highly commends his works and admits his own debt in the Academics to the treatise. Περἱ έποχῆς. Parts of Cicero’s De Natura and De Diainatione, and the treatise De Fato are also in the main based upon Clitomachus.
See E. Wellmann in Ersch and Gruber’s Allgemeine Encyclopädie; R. Hirzel, Untersuchungen zu Ciceros philosophischen Schriften, i. (1877); Diog. Laërt. iv. 67-92; Cicero, Acad. Pr. ii. 31, 32, and Tusc. iii. 22; and article Academy, Greek.