54 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. S4 



tinguish him from others of his time who bore the not uncommon 

 name Theophrastus. His father's name, Melanthus, and that of 

 his boyhood's teacher at Eresos, one Leucippus, have found a 

 place in history only as associated with that of this child and youth 

 whom they called Tyrtamus. We shall be warranted in inferring 

 that the child was o' unusual gifts and marked by nature for the 

 intellectual life; also that Melanthus, the fuller, was in comfortable 

 circumstances financially, for the educational advantages that were 

 given the boy were then somewhat rare and costly. How well the 

 child had improved his opportunities is attested by this, that 

 while as yet but a youth, he was away beyond the farther shore of 

 the jEgean Sea, at Athens, and there numbered among the disciples 

 of Plato. All historians of the period credit him with having been 

 under that philosopher's instruction before coming to Aristotle ; and 

 as Tyrtamus was only twenty-two years old when Plato died, it is 

 plain that the enrolment among Plato's pupils must have been 

 made when the subject of our sketch was but a youth — possibly a 

 precocious, eager, ambitious boy only. 



The histories all read as if Aristotle's marked friendship and ef- 

 ficient patronage had had very much to do with establishing the 

 fame and directing the luminous career of Theophrastus. There 

 must be a large measure of truthfulness in this representation, though 

 it is more than possible that it is somewhat exaggeiated in Aristotle's 

 favor ; and history should take cognizance of the universal and even 

 necessary fact, that in great friendships the influences are mutual, 

 just as when, in the heavens, two planets move to their conjunction 

 each influences irresistibly the orbit of the other, draws it some- 

 what aside from what should have been its path. The story, as 

 always rather too briefly told, leaves an impression, not intended 

 to be made, of great disparity between the two both as to years and 

 some other controlling influences ; seeming to represent Tyrtamus as 

 the brilliant young favorite, and Aristotle the elderly admiring 

 teacher and foster-fatheily patron. That the youth, as if irre- 

 sistibly obedient to an old and revered master's mandate, should 

 have renounced the name Tyrtamus that he brought with him 

 from the paternal home in Eresos, so that henceforward he 

 should be Theophrastus, is something to create almost a convic- 

 tion that the one was old and masterful, the other young and 

 submissive, and not to be thought of as an influence upon the 

 thought and action of the elder. Such impressions are wrong, 

 and must vanish by a comparison of certain well authenticated 

 dates, which show that Aristotle was Theophrastus' senior by only 



