56 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54 



is as perfectly authenticated as any other fact or incident in Theo- 

 phrastus' life. He who can make fiction of this part of it may upon 

 similar grounds invalidate, piece by piece, the whole biography. No 

 reason having been given for doubting about this incident, every one 

 to whom the appellation is not meaningless will see that Tyrta- 

 mus was a grotesque name, if not a ridiculous one, to be borne by a 

 scholar and orator of commanding presence and predestined great 

 renown. The young man himself, as well as his master and friend, 

 must have realized this; and it is hardly to be doubted that the 

 displacement and rejection of the unsuitable name was the first 

 object which the change had in view; and that what the new name 

 should be was but a secondary consideration a matter of less 

 importance. Indeed, the biographer Laertius relates that at first 

 the Eresian began to be called Euphrastus, and then later Theo- 

 phrastus. Posterity should be grateful that the change was made; 

 and also grateful for that devoted attachment between the two 

 philosophers by which it came to pass that the elder of them, dying 

 in middle age, had his own work taken up, and carried forward 

 with success during almost another half-century. 1 It was such a 

 friendship as led Aristotle to give to Theophrastus his ow r n library, 

 said to have been the richest one then in existence, and to have 

 included the manuscripts of his own w r orks, a treasure which by 

 means of Theophrastus' jealous care was almost singularly pre- 

 served, and handed down to posterity well-nigh complete. Also the 

 botanic garden which Aristotle had established at Athens was 

 made a gift to Theophrastus; by whom also it was newly equipped, 

 variously improved and adapted to greater usefulness; this, too, 

 on a scale so extensive, that a wealthy friend of Theophrastus and 

 benefactor of science is named in history as having borne the 

 expense of those improvements. 2 The fact of the existence of 

 this Athenian botanic garden will explain how Theophrastus, oc- 

 cupied as he was with the management of, and also engaged in 

 teaching in, a school of two thousand students, with no time or 

 opportunity for travel, gained so intimate a knowledge of the life 

 histories of many plants as he surprises us with in certain chapters 

 of his books. He had studied in that garden at morning, noon, and 



1 Aristotle died at the age of sixty-three years. Theophrastus was then 

 forty-eight; and, according to his own statement in his preface to that book 

 entitled Characteres, he had finished it in his ninety-ninth year. St. Jerome 

 says that Theophrastus died at the age of 107. 



2 The name of this first wealthy patron of botanical science was Demetrius 

 Phalereus, according to Laertius, vol. i, p. 350. 



