Theophrastus (
Greek: '''''';
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". His given name was
Tyrtamus (Τύρταμος), but he later became known by the nickname "Theophrastus", given to him, it is said, by Aristotle to indicate the grace of his conversation (ancient Greek: Θεός = God and φραστος = to phrase i.e divine expression).
According to some sources, Theophrastus' 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, 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. 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. Writing the "
character sketch" as a scholastic exercise also originated in Theophrastus's typology.
Theophrastus'
Enquiry into Plants was first published in a Latin translation by
Theodore Gaza, at Treviso, 1483; 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. 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 excerpts in the
Codex Parisiensis in the
Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Theophrastus detected the process of
germination and realized the importance of
climate and
soil to plants.
Theophrastus was opposed to eating
meat on the grounds that it robbed animals of life and was therefore unjust. Non-human animals, he said, can reason, sense, and feel just as human beings do.. In this he was strongly opposed to
Aristotle's argument that non-human animals ranked far below humans in the
Great Chain of Being, and that they had no interests of their own. For this outspoken position on behalf of the animals, the memory of Theophrastus is cherished by
vegetarians and
animal rights activists up to the present.
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