author
Theophrastus
-371–-287
A student of Plato, a close colleague of Aristotle, and later the head of the Lyceum, this ancient Greek thinker helped shape both philosophy and the early study of plants. His surviving works range from sharp sketches of human behavior to some of the oldest systematic writing on botany.
1 Audiobook
The Characters of Theophrastus A Translation, with Introduction
by Theophrastus
About the author
Born on Lesbos around 371 BC, Theophrastus studied in Athens and became one of Aristotle’s closest associates. After Aristotle left Athens, he succeeded him as head of the Lyceum, leading the Peripatetic school and building a reputation as one of the most wide-ranging scholars of the ancient world.
He wrote on logic, ethics, metaphysics, natural science, and more, but he is especially remembered for Enquiry into Plants and On the Causes of Plants. Those works made him a foundational figure in botanical writing, and many later readers came to think of him as an early "father of botany."
Another of his best-known works, Characters, offers brief, vivid portraits of recognizable human types and helped shape a long literary tradition of observing personality and social behavior. Even in fragments and surviving texts, his work shows a mind interested in both the natural world and the everyday habits of people.