Theophrastus - Writings

Writings

From the lists of Diogenes Laërtius, giving 227 titles, it appears that the activity of Theophrastus extended over the whole field of contemporary knowledge. His writing probably differed little from Aristotle's treatment of the same themes, though supplementary in details. Like Aristotle, most of his writings are lost works.

Thus Theophrastus, like Aristotle, had composed a first and second Analytic. He had also written books on Topics; on the refutation of fallacies; as well as books on the Principles of Natural Philosophy (Physica Auscultatio), on Heaven, and on Meteorological Phenomena. The work of Theophrastus On Affirmation and Denial seems to have corresponded to that of Aristotle's On Judgment.

In addition, he wrote on the Warm and the Cold, on Water, Fire, the Sea, on Coagulation and Melting, on various phenomena of organic and spiritual life, and on the Soul and Sensuous Perception. Likewise we find mention of monographs of Theophrastus on the early Greek philosophers Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Archelaus, Diogenes of Apollonia, Democritus, which were made use of by Simplicius; and also on Xenocrates, against the Academics, and a sketch of the political doctrine of Plato. That he studied general history, as we see from the quotations in Plutarch's lives of Lycurgus, Solon, Aristides, Pericles, Nicias, Alcibiades, Lysander, Agesilaus, and Demosthenes, which were probably borrowed from the work on Lives. But his main efforts were to continue the labours of Aristotle in natural history. This is testified to not only by a number of treatises on individual subjects of zoology, of which, besides the titles, only fragments remain, but also by his books on Stones, his Enquiry into Plants, and On the Causes of Plants, which have come down to us entire. In politics, also, he seems to have trodden in the footsteps of Aristotle. Besides his books on the State, we find quoted various treatises on Education, on Royalty, on the Best State, on Political Morals, and particularly his works on the Laws, one of which, containing a recapitulation of the laws of various barbarian as well as Greek states, was intended to be a companion to Aristotle's outline of Politics, and must have been similar to it. He also wrote on oratory and poetry. Theophrastus, without doubt, departed further from Aristotle in his ethical writings, as also in his metaphysical investigations respecting motion, the soul, and God.

Besides these writings, Theophrastus was the author of several collections of problems, out of which some things at least have passed into the Problems that have come down to us under the name of Aristotle, and commentaries, partly dialogues, to which probably belonged the Erotikos, Megacles, Callisthenes, and Megarikos, and letters, partly books on mathematical sciences and their history.

Many of his works that we do have exist only in fragmentary form. "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 Arthur Hort remarks. "There is no literary charm; the sentences are mostly compressed and highly elliptical, to the point sometimes of obscurity. The text of these fragments and extracts is often so corrupt that there is a certain plausibility to the well-known story that the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus were allowed to languish in the cellar of Neleus of Scepsis and his descendents.