Having never heard of Theophrastus, I guess I was bound to learn a number of things. First of all that there was a Greek philosopher called Theophrastus and that he was a contemporary of Aristotle – indeed they worked together. Together they might be called the founders of plant and animal sciences. Theophrastus concentrated on the plants and Aristotle on the animal life of Lesbos at a place called Pyrrha.
The blurb for the dust-jacket says: When Linnaeus was developing his modern system of plant taxonomy, it was Theophrastus’ work on plants that he used as a basis.’
The book does try to identify some of the places where Th did his botanising and maybe the photos are an effort to expose to the reader some of the plants that Th covered. Plate 13 with what I think is asphodel and Plate 14 with grasses are examples. They are identified only as Irakleio and Kythera.
I also learned about Philip of Macedon, and his son Alexander the Great who was Theophrastus’ pupil when Aristotle and Th moved to Pella on the mainland. The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature doesn’t say that he moved to Pella in Macedonia nor does it say that he was Alexander’s pupil.
Guy Pentreath’s Hellenic Traveller has a section on Pella p.221 ff and the book on Macdeonia by Ioannis Touratsoglou is furnished with pictures. It seems to have been a very impressive place.
Theophrastus is not mentioned in Adam Nicolson’s work The Mighty Dead: Why Homer matters. But that is almost certainly because Theophrastus is too late 300-200 BCE.
The story of Orpheus and Eurydice sort of frames the book. In the story Orpheus looks back at Eurydice after she is recovered from hell and because Orpheus had been enjoined not to look back she disappears for ever. The first paragraph describes Orpheus’s head being washed up in Lesbos after it was torn from his body by Thracian maenads. The last sentence of the book is ‘I will not turn round.’ Maybe the author doesn’t want what she has discovered about Theophrastus to disappear. The information she finds is very conjectural and almost evanescent apart from her conclusion that the Canterbury Tales by Chaucer are based on or use Theophrastus’ work Characters as inspiration. I think the modern novel has a lot to thank Theophrastus for in terms of characterisation.
The map which Beatty provides doesn’t have a lot of places that are referred to , on it e.g. Chalchis. The endnotes refer to the page but not to any specific point on the page. This is because Beatty says this is not an academic work.
I wished I had finished the book being able to remember something about his philosophical teachings but alas I am not able to. This is a work which needs application – it is worthwhile. ( )