c. 320s BC–after 268 BC (exact dates uncertain). From Lampsacus, active in Athens. Wrote in Greek. A direct pupil of Epicurus who wrote a polemical treatise arguing that the doctrines of rival philosophers made it "impossible even to live" if followed consistently; known today mainly because Plutarch wrote a hostile point-by-point rebuttal, Against Colotes, which incidentally preserves a great deal of what Colotes actually argued.
1. Key Texts
As for the famous 'matching-sizes' and 'consonances' of the passages belonging to the sense organs, and 'multiple-mixtures' of the seeds which they [the Epicureans] say are distributed through all flavors, smells and colors and move different sensations of quality in different people, do these not drive things together right into the 'no more this than that' class, on their view? For to reassure those who think that sensation is deceived because they see its users affected in opposite ways by the same things, they teach the doctrine that since all things are jumbled and mixed up together, and some things are of a nature to fit into some things, others into others, it is not the same quality that is being brought into contact; and apprehended, nor does the object move everyone in the same way with all its parts; rather, all individuals encounter only the things of a size to match their own sense, and therefore are wrong to dispute about whether the thing is good or bad or white or non-white in the belief that by confuting each other's sensations they are confirming their own. One should not resist a single sensation, for they all make contact with something, each of them taking from the multiple mixture, as from a well, whatever is fitting and appropriate to itself. And when we are making contact with parts we should make no assertions about the whole. Nor should we think that everyone is affected in the same way, since some are affected by one quality and power, some by another. (tr. Long & Sedley)