Theophrastus

Greek philosopher, born in Eresus, Lesbos, Greece. At Athens he studied under Aristotle, becoming his close friend, and head of the Peripatetic school after his death. He was responsible for preserving many of Aristotle's works, along with many fragments of the Presocratics. Among his own works which have survived are two books on plants, and Charact?res, describing 30 moral types based on studies by Aristotle.

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; 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. 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.

Theophrastus presided over the Peripatetic school for thirty-five years, and died at the age of eighty-five according to Diogenes.

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.

From the lists of Diogenes, giving 227 titles, it appears that the activity of Theophrastus extended over the whole field of contemporary knowledge. 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; The works profit from the reports on plants of Asia brought back from those who followed Alexander;

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.

"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.

His book The Characters, if it is indeed his, deserves a separate mention. 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' 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.