Metaphysics
Athens · -287
T
Theophrastus
Theophrastus
c. 371 BCE–c. 287 BCE · Athens
Theophrastus (c. 371 – c. 287 BCE) was a Greek philosopher and naturalist from Eresus on the island of Lesbos who succeeded Aristotle as head of the Peripatetic school (the Lyceum) in Athens, leading it for roughly thirty-five years. A student and close associate of Aristotle, he extended the Peripatetic program across logic, physics, metaphysics, ethics, and the natural sciences. He is best known for his botanical treatises, "Enquiry into Plants" and "On the Causes of Plants," which laid the foundations of systematic botany, and for his "Characters," a set of sketches of ethical types. His surviving shorter works include a "Metaphysics," which raises critical questions about Aristotle's account of first principles and teleology, and the physiological essay "On Fatigue" (De Lassitudine).
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AthensAttica (Greece)
We know they were here, but the specifics of what they did at this stop aren’t recorded yet in our corpus.
About Athens
The intellectual capital of the Greek world, where Socrates questioned in the agora and four great schools—Plato's Academy, Aristotle's Lyceum, the Stoa, and Epicurus' Garden—took root within a single square mile.
In Athens at the same time
Democritus, Antisthenes, Isocrates, Alcidamas, Xenophon, Plato
In the same place & time
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Sages whose lives overlapped with Theophrastus’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
In the same tradition
Democritus, Antisthenes, Isocrates, Alcidamas, Xenophon, Plato, Isaeus, Diogenes of Sinope, Speusippus, Xenocrates of Chalcedon, Apollodorus son of Pasion, Heraclides Ponticus, Hyperides, Lycurgus, Hegesippus, Aeschines, Philip of Opus, Aristotle
The world in their lifetime
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Theophrastus’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Egyptian world
Jewish world
Mesopotamian world
Works(18)
De Lassitudine
Athens · -287
De Vertigine
Athens · -287
De odoribus
Athens · -287
De Signis Tempestatum
Athens · -287
De sensu et sensibilibus
Athens · -287
Enquiry into Plants
Athens · -300
De Sudore
Athens · -287
On Fire
Athens · -287
De Animi Defectione
Athens · -287
Fragmenta varia
Athens · -287
De Nervorum Resolutione
Athens · -315
De Odoribus
Athens · -287
On the Causes of Plants
Athens · -287
De signis tempestatum
Athens · -287
De Ventis
Athens · -287
De lapidibus
Athens · -287
Characters
Athens · -319