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Updated: June 24, 2025
Theophrastus says that the reading of poetry is of vast service to the orator.
Theophrastus was not very successful in distinguishing the nature of the primary elements of plants, though he was able to separate root, stem, leaf, stipule, and flower on morphological as well as to a limited extent on physiological grounds. But Theophrastus shows by many examples that he is capable of following out morphological homologies.
He would have thought that the more he showed his poverty, the more he would be pitied, the worst mistake a poor cousin can commit. According to Theophrastus, the partridge of Paphlagonia has two hearts: so have most men; it is the common mistake of the unlucky to knock at the wrong one. Mr. Digby entered the room of the inn in which he had left Helen.
It is recorded by Herodotus and is represented by a frequent symbol on the Assyrian monuments. Pliny, Naturalis historia, xiii. 4. The special meaning here given to the word is explained in another work of Theophrastus, De causis plantarum, ii. 9, xv. Historia plantarum, ii. 8, iv. Herodotus i. 193.
Varro takes the lion's share of the first dialogue, and shows how from the "vast and varied genius of Plato" both Academics and Peripatetics drew all their philosophy, whether it related to morals, to nature, or to logic. Stoicism receives a passing notice, as also does what Varro considers the heresy of Theophrastus, who strips virtue of all its beauty, by denying that happiness depends upon it.
But the appointment of Aesymnetes can hardly be called a regular form of government. They soon became obsolete the mere creatures of occasion. While they lasted, they bore a strong resemblance to the Roman dictators a resemblance remarked by Dionysius, who quotes Theophrastus as agreeing with Aristotle in his account of the Aesymnetes.
And according to Homer, apples were among the fruits which Tantalus could not pluck, the wind ever blowing their boughs away from him. Theophrastus knew and described the apple-tree as a botanist. According to the Prose Edda, "Iduna keeps in a box the apples which the gods, when they feel old age approaching, have only to taste of to become young again.
Theophrastus speaks of a poison prepared from aconite, which could be moderated in such a manner as to have effect in two or three months, or at the end of a year or two years; and he also relates, that Thrasyas had discovered a method of preparing from other plants a poison which, given in small doses, occasioned a certain but easy death, without any pain, and which could be kept back for a long time without causing weakness or corruption.
This classification of the lower forms of animal life continued in vogue until Cuvier substituted for it his famous grouping into articulates, mollusks, and radiates; which grouping in turn was in part superseded later in the nineteenth century. What Aristotle did for the animal kingdom his pupil, Theophrastus, did in some measure for the vegetable kingdom.
But Chaucer owed nothing to Theophrastus. In his Character Writing he drew all from nature with his own good wit. La Bruyère in France translated the characters of Theophrastus, and his own writing of Characters in the seventeenth century followed a fashion that had its origin in admiration of the wit of those Greek Ethical Characters. La Bruyère was born in 1639 and died in 1696.
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