Theophrastus

Theophrastus lived circa 371 to circa 287 BC and was an ancient Greek philosopher and naturalist; a native of Eresos in Lesbos, he was Aristotle's close colleague and successor as head of the Lyceum, the Peripatetic school of philosophy in Athens. He wrote numerous treatises across all areas of philosophy, working to support, improve, expand and develop the Aristotelian system, and made significant contributions to ethics, metaphysics, botany and natural history, often called the father of botany for his groundbreaking Enquiry into Plants and On the Causes of Plants, which established the foundations of botanical science; his given name was Tyrtamos, and the nickname Theophrastus, meaning divine speaker, was reputedly given to him by Aristotle in recognition of his eloquent style. He came to Athens young and initially studied in Plato's school, attaching himself to Aristotle after Plato's death, and took over as head of the Lyceum when Aristotle fled Athens, presiding over the school for thirty-six years during which it flourished greatly; after his death the Athenians honored him with a public funeral, and his successor was Strato of Lampsacus. His surviving works beyond botany include On Moral Characters, On Sense Perception and On Stones, along with fragments on Physics and Metaphysics; in philosophy he studied grammar and language and continued Aristotle's work on logic, viewed space as merely the arrangement and position of bodies, time as a byproduct of motion and motion as an inevitable result of all activity, and in ethics regarded happiness as depending on external influences as well as on virtue.