LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 55 



fifteen years; also that the two were fellow students under Plato. 

 Aristotle from the age of seventeen to thirty-seven had been Plato's 

 pupil. Tyrtamus, it may reasonably be assumed, entered Plato's 

 discipleship at seventeen if not earlier. If so, he may have been 

 Aristotle's student companion there for from five to seven years be- 

 fore the day when Aristotle left Plato and opened a Lyceum of his 

 own. Shortly after this Plato died; and then, unless he had done 

 so even earlier, Theophrastus became Aristotle's student. And 

 as for this new name, it is not necessary to suppose that it was 

 bestowed merely as the flattering compliment paid a highly promis- 

 ing young student by an old preceptor. The two were in truth 

 much upon an equality. They were companions and much at- 

 tached friends, with no signal disparity between them as to years; 

 so that the change of name may well be thought to have been 

 brought about by mutual agreement. 



I can not but wonder at the boldness with which Meyer pro- 

 nounces this change of name from Tyrtamus to Theophrastus to be 

 a fable. 1 No one else has questioned the authenticity of this part 

 of the biography; and he has not been able to adduce so much as 

 one valid reason for his pronouncement against its truthfulness. 

 One of his supposed reasons is, that Aristotle was no flatterer. To 

 have rendered this an argument, Meyer should first have disputed 

 the sincerity of Aristotle's friendship for Theophrastus; for between 

 genuine and devoted friends flattery is impossible. But he says 

 the name Theophrastus was not uncommon among Greeks of the 

 period, which is equivalent to saying that, if the philosopher had 

 been going to give his disciple a new name he would have selected 

 some uncommon name, or else that the Eresian had always been 

 Theophrastus and never Tyrtamus. That "such a changing of 

 names was unknown" is quite as inane as the rest of this historian's 

 argument upon the subject. Not one in ten thousand of the ancient 

 Greeks has been known to us by any name at all. Even of that 

 comparatively very small number whose names we have heard, 

 who shall say that none besides Theophrastus ever underwent a 

 change of name because the event if it happened was not recorded? 

 There is not the least reason for thinking that with Greeks, in 

 passing from one age or condition of life to another, the taking of^a 

 new name was uncommon. There were distinguished examples 

 of it among some of their neighbors, the Hebrews, for example. 

 Meyer concedes that this "fable" about Theophrastus was uni- 

 versally received as a fact by all the ancients, and we add that it 



' E. H. F. Meyer, Geschichte der Botanik, i, p. 147. 



