Greece & Rome · c. 371–287 BCE
Theophrastus
Aristotle’s successor at the Lyceum and founder of botany
Extended Aristotle’s research programme to plants, stones and human types, while probing weak points in his teacher’s account of purpose in nature. His Characters sketches thirty kinds of flawed person.
Life and thought
Theophrastus came from Eresus on Lesbos and probably met Aristotle there; he followed him to Athens and, when Aristotle left in 323/322 BCE, took over the Lyceum, which he led for some thirty-five years. Ancient sources say he had about two thousand students and wrote more than two hundred works. His botanical books survive almost complete, along with the short Characters, an essay on metaphysics and works on stones and the senses.
He carried Aristotle’s research programme into new fields, classifying some five hundred plants by their parts, growth and uses, which earned him the title “father of botany”. He was also a loyal critic: in his Metaphysics he asked whether purpose really runs through all of nature, noting that much seems to happen by chance. The Characters, thirty sketches of flawed types such as the Flatterer and the Penny-pincher, became a model for European character writing from La Bruyère on.