Theophrastus
Aristotle's successor and the father of botany
c. 371 BC – c. 287 BC
Theophrastus of Eresus in Lesbos (c. 371–287 BC) was Aristotle's most important pupil and his successor as head of the Lyceum for thirty-six years.
The Characters is a collection of thirty brief sketches of moral types — the Flatterer, the Boor, the Garrulous Man, the Penurious Man, and so on. Each character is defined in a sentence, then illustrated with a catalogue of typical behaviours. The Garrulous Man sits down next to a stranger and delivers a monologue about his wife. The Penurious Man counts the half-pints at a dinner party.
The Characters was enormously influential. La Bruyere's Caracteres was directly inspired by it, and the tradition of character-writing runs through Addison, Steele, and the eighteenth-century essayists. The sketches remain funny, sharp, and recognisable.
Thirty character sketches of human types — the flatterer, the miser, the boor, the superstitious man. Each one is a page long and recognisable after t...
A short treatise examining the phenomenon of fainting and loss of consciousness. Theophrastus investigates the physical causes of syncope and its rela...
The first surviving work of mineralogy. Theophrastus classifies and describes dozens of stones, minerals, and earths, noting their physical properties...
A short treatise examining the nature and causes of fatigue. Theophrastus investigates why physical exertion produces exhaustion and how the body reco...
A treatise on paralysis and loss of muscular function. Theophrastus examines the causes and varieties of this condition, connecting it to disruptions...
A treatise on smells and their sources. Theophrastus investigates why different substances produce different odours, how smell relates to the other se...
Theophrastus' treatise on sense-perception, reviewing and critiquing the theories of his predecessors. He examines how earlier philosophers — from Emp...
A treatise on weather signs — how to predict rain, wind, storms, and fair weather from natural indicators. Theophrastus catalogues hundreds of prognos...
A short treatise on vertigo and dizziness. Theophrastus examines the physical causes of these conditions, connecting them to disturbances of the senso...
Theophrastus' great botanical encyclopaedia across nine books. The Enquiry into Plants provides the first systematic classification of the plant kingd...
Miscellaneous fragments surviving from Theophrastus' lost works. These passages, preserved by later authors, give glimpses of his wide-ranging investi...
Theophrastus' short treatise on first principles and metaphysical questions. He raises searching difficulties about Aristotle's system — the relations...
Theophrastus' companion to the Enquiry into Plants, investigating the causes of plant growth, reproduction, and change across six books. Where the Enq...