Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​Theophrastus was the son of Melantas, a fuller of Eresus, as Athenodorus says in the eighth book of his Peripatetics. He first heard Alcippus, his fellow citizen, in his native city, and then, after hearing Plato, went over to Aristotle; and when the latter withdrew to Chalcis, he himself succeeded to the headship of the school in the one hundred and fourteenth Olympiad. It is also related that he had a philosopher slave named Pompylus, as Myronianus of Amastris says in the first book of his Similar Historical Chapters. Theophrastus became a man of the greatest intelligence and industry, and, as Pamphile says in the thirty-second book of her Memorabilia, the teacher of Menander the comic poet;

​moreover, he was also beneficent and devoted to learning. Cassander, at any rate, received him with favor, and Ptolemy sent for him; and he was held in such high esteem among the Athenians that when Hagnonides ventured to indict him for impiety, he came near incurring a fine himself. As many as two thousand students attended his school. Among other things, he discussed the lawcourts in such terms as these, in his letter to Phanias the Peripatetic: "For it is not easy to obtain an audience, such as one would wish, not to speak of a general assembly, but not even a small council; but public readings bring about corrections; and our time of life no longer tolerates postponing everything and neglecting it." In this letter he used the word 'scholastic'.

​Being such a man, he nevertheless went abroad for a short time, both he and all the other philosophers, when Sophocles the son of Amphicleides introduced a law that none of the philosophers should preside over a school unless approved by the council and the people, on pain of death as the penalty. But they returned again in the following year, when Philo indicted Sophocles for proposing an unconstitutional measure. The Athenians then repealed the law, fined Sophocles five talents, and voted the return of the philosophers, so that Theophrastus also might return and be in the same position as before. He was originally called Tyrtamus, but Aristotle changed his name to Theophrastus because of the divine excellence of his eloquence;

​and Aristippus says in the fourth book of his On the Ancient Luxury that he was passionately attached to Aristotle's son Nicomachus, although he was his teacher. It is also said that Aristotle said of him and Callisthenes the same thing which, as mentioned before, Plato is reported to have said of Xenocrates and Aristotle himself: namely, that since Theophrastus, through excessive quickness, gave expression to whatever he thought, while the other was sluggish by nature, the one needed a bridle and the other a spur. It is also said that he acquired a garden of his own after Aristotle's death, with the assistance of Demetrius of Phalerum, who was also his pupil. These serviceable maxims of his are reported: he said that one ought sooner to trust an unbridled horse than an undisciplined discourse;

​and to one who remained entirely silent at a symposium he said: "If you are uneducated, you are acting wisely; but if you are educated, foolishly." He also used to say continually that time was a costly expenditure. He died at an advanced age, having lived eighty-five years, as soon as he relaxed a little from his labors. And there is an epigram of ours upon him: "It was not in vain, then, that this word was spoken to one of mortal men, that the bow of wisdom breaks when slackened; for indeed Theophrastus too, while he labored, was sound in body, but once slackened he died with crippled limbs." They say that when he was asked by his disciples whether he had any dying charge to give, he said: "I have nothing to enjoin, except that life boasts falsely of many pleasant things for the sake of fame."