Theophrastus

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Theophrastus (Greek Θεόφραστος, 370 — about 285 BC), a native of Eressos in Lesbos, was the successor of Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. All the biographical information we have of him was provided by Diogenes Laertius' Lives of the Philosophers, written four hundred years after Theophrastus' time, though "there is no intrinsic improbability in most of what Diogenes records".^[1] His given name was Tyrtamus, but he later became known by the nickname "Theophrastus", given to him, it is said, by Aristotle to indicate the grace of his conversation.

According to some sources, Theophrastus's father was named Messapus, and was married to a woman named Argiope and was the father of Cercyon -- but, this is not certain.

After receiving his first introduction to philosophy in Lesbos from one Leucippus or Alcippus, he proceeded to Athens, and became a member of the Platonic circle. After Plato's death he attached himself to Aristotle, and in all probability accompanied him to Stagira. The intimate friendship of Theophrastus with Callisthenes, the fellow-pupil of Alexander the Great, the mention made in his will of an estate belonging to him at Stagira, and the repeated notices of the town and its museum in the nine books of his Enquiry into plants and his six books of Causes of Plants point to this conclusion.

Aristotle in his will made him guardian of his children, bequeathed to him his library and the originals of his works,^[2] and designated him as his successor at the Lyceum on his own removal to Chalcis. Eudemus of Rhodes also had some claims to this position, and Aristoxenus is said to have resented Aristotle's choice.

Theophrastus presided over the Peripatetic school for thirty-five years, and died at the age of eighty-five according to Diogenes.^[3] He is said to have remarked "we die just when we are beginning to live".

Under his guidance the school flourished greatly— there were at one period more than 2000 students, Diogenes affirms— and at his death, according to the terms of his will preserved by Diogenes, he bequeathed to it his garden with house and colonnades as a permanent seat of instruction. Menander was among his pupils. His popularity was shown in the regard paid to him by Philip, Cassander and Ptolemy, and by the complete failure of a charge of impiety brought against him. He was honoured with a public funeral, and "the whole population of Athens, honouring him greatly, followed him to the grave" (Diogenes Laertius).

From the lists of Diogenes, giving 227 titles, it appears that the activity of Theophrastus extended over the whole field of contemporary knowledge. His writing probably differed little from the Aristotelian treatment of the same themes, though supplementary in details. He served his age mainly as a great popularizer of science. The most important of his books are two large botanical treatises, Enquiry into Plants, in nine books (originally ten), and On the Causes of Plants, in six books (originally eight), which constitute the most important contribution to botanical science during antiquity and the middle ages, the first systemization of the botanical world; on the strength of these works some call him the "father of Taxonomy". The works profit from the reports on plants of Asia brought back from those who followed Alexander; "to the reports of Alexander's followers he owed his accounts of such plants as the cotton-plant, banyan, pepper, cinnamon, myrrh and frankincense." (Hort). He released the first recorded message in a bottle in order to show that the Mediterranean Sea was formed by the inflowing Atlantic Ocean.

We also possess in fragments a History of Physics, a treatise On Stones, and a work On Sensation, and certain metaphysical Airoptai, which probably once formed part of a systematic treatise. He made the first known reference to the phenomenon of pyroelectricity, noting in 314 BC that the mineral tourmaline becomes charged when heated. Various smaller scientific fragments have been collected in the editions of Johann Gottlob Schneider (1818–21) and Friedrich Wimmer (1842—62) and in Hermann Usener's Analecta Theophrastea.

"The style of these works, as of the botanical books, suggests that, as in the case of Aristotle, what we possess consists of notes for lectures or notes taken of lectures," his translator Sir A. Hort remarks. "There is no literary charm; the sentences are mostly compressed and highly elliptical, to the point sometimes of obscurity."

His book The Characters, if it is indeed his, deserves a separate mention. The work consists of brief, vigorous and trenchant delineations of moral types, which contain a most valuable picture of the life of his time. They form the first recorded attempt at systematic character writing. The book has been regarded by some as an independent work; others incline to the view that the sketches were written from time to time by Theophrastus, and collected and edited after his death; others, again, regard the Characters as part of a larger systematic work, but the style of the book is against this. Theophrastus has found many imitators in this kind of writing, notably Hall (1608), Sir Thomas Overbury (1614–16), Bishop Earle (1628) and Jean de La Bruyère (1688), who also translated the Characters. George Eliot also took inspiration from Theophrastus' Characters, most notably in her book of caricatures, Impressions of Theophrastus Such.

Theophrastus' Enquiry into Plants was first published in a Latin translation by Theodore Gaza, at Treviso, 1483;^[4] in its original Greek it first appeared from the press of Aldus Manutius at Venice, 1495-98, from a third-rate manuscript, which, like the majority of the manuscripts that were sent to printers' workshops in the fifteenth and sixteenth century, has disappeared.^[5] Wimmer identified two manuscripts of first quality, the Codex Urbinas in the Vatican Library, which was not made known to J.G. Schneider, who made the first modern critical edition, 1818-21, and the exerpts in the Codex Parisiensis in the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Sir Arthur Hort, Introduction to Enquiry into Plants.
2. ^ "It may we be that we owe to Theophrastus the publication of some at least of his master's voluminous works." (Hort).
3. ^ "He is made indeed to say in the probably spurious Preface to the Characters that he is writing in his ninety-ninth year; while St. Jerome's Chronicle asserts that he lived to the age of 107" (Hort).
4. ^ Gaza, a refugee from Thessalonika, was working from a lost Greek manuscript that was different from any others. (Hort).
5. ^ It was carefully copied in a printing at Basel, 1541.

[edit] References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
• Sir Arthur F. Hort, Theophrastus: Enquiry into Plants Loeb Classical Library, 2 vols. 1916 etc.