Though, according to the 4th-century BC father of botany, Theophrastus, olive trees ordinarily attained an age of about 200 years, he mentions that the very olive tree of Athena still grew on the Acropolis ; it was still to be seen there in the 2nd century AD ; and when Pausanias was shown it, ca 170 AD, he reported " Legend also says that when the Persians fired Athens the olive was burnt down, but on the very day it was burnt it grew again to the height of two cubits.

:" And Theophrastus says that some contrivances are of wondrous efficacy in such matters to make people more amorous.

Diogenes Laërtius ascribes to Theophrastus the theory that Heraclitus did not complete some of his works because of melancholia.

But for them, we should be without the most important fragments of the writings of the Eleatics, of Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Diogenes of Apollonia, and others, which were at that time already very scarce, as well as without many extracts from the lost books of Aristotle, Theophrastus and Eudemus: but for them we should hardly be able to unriddle the doctrine of the Categories, so important for the system of the Stoics.

Most of the biographical information we have of Theophrastus was provided by Diogenes Laërtius ' Lives of the Philosophers, written more than four hundred years after Theophrastus ' time.

Theophrastus presided over the Peripatetic school for thirty-five years, and died at the age of eighty-five according to Diogenes.

From the lists of Diogenes Laërtius, giving 227 titles, it appears that the activity of Theophrastus extended over the whole field of contemporary knowledge.

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.

There were several copies of wills in Diogenes Laertius, as those of Aristotle, Lyco of Troas, and Theophrastus ; whence it appears they had a common form, beginning with a wish for life and health.

He was the friend and fellow-citizen of Theophrastus, a letter of whose to Phaenias is mentioned by Diogenes Laërtius.

He was a disciple of Aristotle, and a friend of Theophrastus, to whom he dedicated some of his writings.

The two types, κάρδαμομον and ἄμωμον were distinguished in the fourth century BCE by the Greek father of botany, Theophrastus, some of whose informants told him they came to Greece from the land of the Medes in northern Persia, while others were aware it came originally from India.

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.

The book has been regarded by some as an independent work ; others incline to the view that the sketches were written from time to time by Theophrastus, and collected and edited after his death ; others, again, regard the Characters as part of a larger systematic work, but the style of the book is against this.

For the rest, some minor deviations from the Aristotelian definitions are quoted from the Topica of Theophrastus.

Theophrastus notes its smooth sharp thorns, like those of a pear, the very fragrant but inedible ' apple ', which keeps moths from clothes, and the fact that " it bears its ' apples ' at all season ; for when some have been gathered, the flower of others is on the tree and it is ripening others ....

Virgil used other Greek writers as models and sources, some for technical information, including the Hellenistic poet Aratus for astronomy and meteorology, Nicander for information about snakes, the philosopher Aristotle for zoology, and Aristotle's student Theophrastus for botany, and others, such as the Hellenistic poet Callimachus for poetic and stylistic considerations.

Euclid is laboriously measured by some of them ; and Aristotle and Theophrastus are admired ; and Galen, perhaps, by some is even worshiped.

The ancients had a variety of ideas about heredity: Theophrastus proposed that male flowers caused female flowers to ripen ; Hippocrates speculated that " seeds " were produced by various body parts and transmitted to offspring at the time of conception ; and Aristotle thought that male and female semen mixed at conception.

Theophrastus seems to have carried out still further the grammatical foundation of logic and rhetoric, since in his book on the elements of speech, he distinguished the main parts of speech from the subordinate parts, and also direct expressions ( kuria lexis ) from metaphorical expressions, and dealt with the emotions ( pathe ) of speech.

Pliny states that the Ptolemies introduced labdanum into ' the parts beyond Egypt .” It was known to the Greeks as early as the times of Herodotus ( 484-425 BC ) and Theophrastus ( 370-285 BC ).

The study of the physical material of the Earth dates back at least to ancient Greece when Theophrastus ( 372-287 BCE ) wrote the work Peri Lithon ( On Stones ).

She was at her most autobiographical in Looking Backwards, part of her final printed work Impressions of Theophrastus Such.

The work of Theophrastus remained a dominant influence in the study of weather and in weather forecasting for nearly 2, 000 years.

Theophrastus Phillipus Auroleus Bombastus von Hohenheim ( 1493 – 1541 ) ( also referred to as Paracelsus, from his belief that his studies were above or beyond the work of Celsus-a Roman physician from the first century ) is also considered " the father " of toxicology.

The earlier Megarian dialecticians – Diodorus Cronus and Philo – had done work in this field, and the pupils of Aristotle – Theophrastus and Eudemus – had investigated hypothetical syllogisms, but it was Chrysippus who developed these principles into a coherent system of propositional logic.

* Circuit of the Earth ()-This work was probably the text written in explanation of the geographical maps which Dicaearchus had constructed and given to Theophrastus, and which seem to have comprised the whole world, as far as it was then known.

* Description of Greece ()-This is a fragment of a work dedicated to " Theophrastus ", and consisting of 150 iambic lines.

One of the earliest observations of species in Araceae was conducted by Theophrastus in his work Enquiry into Plants.

Aristotle ( 384 – 322 BC ) classified animal species in his work The History of Animals, and his pupil Theophrastus ( c. 371 – c.

The materials are said to be taken almost wholly from Aristotle's Meteorologica, from the work of Theophrastus, On Weather Signs, and from Hesiod.

The work of Theophrastus On Affirmation and Denial seems to have corresponded to that of Aristotle's On Judgment.

The Metaphysics ( nine chapters ) was considered a fragment of a larger work by Usener in his edition ( Theophrastos Metaphysica, Bonn, 1890 ), but according to Ross and Fobes in their edition ( Theophrastus Metaphysica, Oxford, 1929 ), the treatise is complete ( p. X ) and this opinion is now widely accepted.

Theophrastus wrote a separate work On Mining, which like most of his writings is a lost work.

Although Pliny's treatment of the subject is more extensive, Theophrastus is more systematic and his work is comparatively free from fable and magic.

* Theophrastus work " On Stones " full text + annotation

* Theophrastus work " The Characters " English translation

That this work cannot have been written by Aristippus of Cyrene has long been realised, not least because the author mentions Theophrastus who lived a generation after Aristippus.

The work of rhizomatist ( the rhizomati were the doctors of the day, berated by Theophrastus for their superstition ) Krateuas ( fl.

Will Godwin, a young boy, is forced to work for the evil apothecary Dr. Elias Theophrastus Spittle after Spittle frames him for a murder.

A work On Plants is repeatedly quoted by Athenaeus, and frequently in connection with the work of Theophrastus on the same subject, to which, therefore, it may have been a supplement.