[1] It is in this general sense that the subject is considered in this article. The term is, however, used in more restricted senses, generally with some word of qualification, e.g. “textual criticism” or “higher criticism”; see the article [Textual Criticism] and the article [Bible] for an outstanding example of both “textual” and “higher.”
CRITIUS and NESIOTES, two Greek sculptors of uncertain school, of the time of the Persian Wars. When Xerxes carried away to Persia the statues of Harmodius and Aristogiton made by Antenor, Critius and Nesiotes were commissioned to replace them. By the help of coins and reliefs, two statues at Naples, wrongly restored as gladiators, have been identified as copies of the tyrannicides of Critius; and to them well apply the words in which Lucian (Rhetor. praecepta, 9) describes the works of Critius and Nesiotes, “closely knit and sinewy, and hard and severe in outline.” Critius also made a statue of the armed runner Epicharinus.
CRITOLAUS, Greek philosopher, was born at Phaselis in the 2nd century B.C. He lived to the age of eighty-two and died probably before 111 B.C. He studied philosophy under Aristo of Ceos and became one of the leaders of the Peripatetic school by his eminence as an orator, a scholar and a moralist. There has been considerable discussion as to whether he was the immediate successor of Aristo, but the evidence is confused and unprofitable. In general he was a loyal adherent to the Peripatetic succession (cf. Cicero, De fin. v. 5 “C. imitari antiquos voluit”), though in some respects he went beyond his predecessors. For example, he held that pleasure is an evil (Gellius, Noctes Atticae, ix. 5. 6), and definitely maintained that the soul consists of aether. The end of existence was to him the general perfection of the natural life, including the goods of the soul and the body, and also external goods. Cicero says in the Tusculans that the goods of the soul entirely outweighed for him the other goods (“tantum propendere illam bonorum animi lancem”). Further, he defended against the Stoics the Peripatetic doctrine of the eternity of the world and the indestructibility of the human race. There is no observed change in the natural order of things; mankind re-creates itself in the same manner according to the capacity given by Nature, and the various ills to which it is heir, though fatal to individuals, do not avail to modify the whole. Just as it is absurd to suppose that man is merely earth-born, so the possibility of his ultimate destruction is inconceivable. The world, as the manifestation of eternal order, must itself be immortal. The life of Critolaus is not recorded. One incident alone is preserved. From Cicero (Acad. ii. 45) it appears that he was sent with Carneades and Diogenes to Rome in 156-155 B.C. to protest against the fine of 500 talents imposed on Athens in punishment for the sack of Oropus. The three ambassadors lectured on philosophy in Rome with so much success that Cato was alarmed and had them dismissed the city. Gellius describes his arguments as scita et teretia.
Consult the article [Peripatetics], and histories of ancient philosophy, e.g. Zeller.
CRITTENDEN, JOHN JORDAN (1787-1863), American statesman, was born in Versailles, Kentucky, on the 10th of September 1787. After graduating at the College of William and Mary in 1807, he began the practice of law in his native state. He served for three months, in 1810, as attorney-general of Illinois Territory, but soon returned to Kentucky, and during the War of 1812 he was for a time on the staff of General Isaac Shelby. In 1811-1817 he served in the state House of Representatives, being speaker in 1815-1816, and in 1817-1819 was a United States senator. Settling in Frankfort, he soon took high rank as a criminal lawyer, was in the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1825 and 1829-1832, acting as speaker in the latter period, and from 1827 to 1829 was United States district-attorney. He was removed by President Jackson, to whom he was radically opposed. In 1835, as a Whig, he was again elected to the United States Senate, and was re-elected in 1841, but resigned to enter the cabinet of President W. H. Harrison as attorney-general, continuing after President Tyler’s accession and serving from March until September. He was again a member of the United States Senate from 1842 to 1848, and in 1848-1850 was governor of Kentucky. He was an ardent and outspoken supporter of Clay’s compromise measures, and in 1850 he entered President Fillmore’s cabinet as attorney-general, serving throughout the administration. From 1855 to 1861 he was once more a member of the United States Senate. During these years he was perhaps the foremost champion of Union in the South, and strenuously opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, which he declared prophetically would unite the various elements of opposition in the North, and render the breach between the sections irreparable. Nevertheless he laboured unceasingly in the cause of compromise, gave his strong support to the Bell and Everett ticket in 1860, and in 1860-1861 proposed and vainly contended for the adoption by congress of the compromise measures which bear his name. When war became inevitable he threw himself zealously into the Union cause, and lent his great influence to keep Kentucky in the Union. In 1861-1863 he was a member of the national House of Representatives, where, while advocating the prosecution of the war, he opposed such radical measures as the division of Virginia, the enlistment of slaves and the Conscription Acts. He died at Frankfort, Kentucky, on the 26th of July 1863.
See the Life of J. J. Crittenden, by his daughter Mrs Chapman Coleman (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1871).