Enquiry into Plants/Volume 1/Introduction
INTRODUCTION
I.—Bibliography and Abbreviations used
A. Textual Authorities
Wimmer divides the authorities on which the text of the περὶ φυτῶν ἱστορία is based into three classes:—
First Class:
U. Codex Urbinas in the Vatican. Collated by Bekker and Amati; far the best extant extant MS., but evidently founded on a much corrupted copy. See note on 9. 8. 1.
P2. Codex Parisiensis: at Paris. Contains considerable excerpts; evidently founded on a good MS.; considered by Wimmer second only in authority to U.
(Of other collections of excerpts may be mentioned one at Munich, called after Pletho.)
Second Class:
M (M1, M2). Codices Medicei: at Florence. Agree so closely that they may be regarded as a single MS.; considered by Wimmer much inferior to U, but of higher authority than Ald.
P. Codex Parisiensis: at Paris. Considered by Wimmer somewhat inferior to M and V, and more on a level with Ald.
mP. Margin of the above. A note in the MS. states that the marginal notes are not scholia, but variae lectiones aut emendationes.
V. Codex Vindobonensis: at Vienna. Contains the first five books and two chapters of the sixth; closely resembles M in style and readings.
Third Class:
Ald. Editio Aldina: the editio princeps, printed at Venice 1495–8. Believed by Wimmer to be founded on a single MS., and that an inferior one to those enumerated above, and also to that used by Gaza. Its readings seem often to show signs of a deliberate attempt to produce a smooth text: hence the value of this edition as witness to an independent MS. authority is much impaired.
(Bas. Editio Basiliensis: printed at Bâle, 1541. A careful copy of Ald., in which a number of printer's errors are corrected and a few new ones introduced (Wimmer).
G. The Latin version of Theodore Gaza,[1] the Greek refugee: first printed at Treviso (Tarvisium) in 1483. A wonderful work for the time at which it appeared. Its present value is due to the fact that the translation was made from a different MS. to any known. Unfortunately however this does not seem to have been a better text than that on which the Aldine edition was based. Moreover Gaza did not stick to his authority, but adopted freely Pliny's versions of Theophrastus, emending where he could not follow Pliny. There are several editions of Gaza's work: thus
G. Par. G. Bas. indicate respectively editions published at Paris in 1529 and at Bâle in 1534 and 1550. Wimmer has no doubt that the Tarvisian is the earliest edition, and he gives its readings, whereas Schneider often took those of G.Bas.
B. Editions
H. Editio Heinsii, printed at Leyden, 1613: founded on Cam. and very carelessly printed, repeating the misprints of that edition and adding many others. In the preface Daniel Heins[2] pretends to have had access to a critical edition and to a Heidelberg MS.; this claim appears to be entirely fictitious. The book indeed contains what Wimmer calls a farrago emendationum; he remarks that 'all the good things in it Heinsius owed to the wit of others, while all its faults and follies we owe to Heinsius.' Schneider calls it editio omnium pessima.
Bod. Editio Bodaei (viz. of Joannes Bodaeus à Stapel), printed at Amsterdam, 1644. The text of Heinsius is closely followed; the margin contains a number of emendations taken from the margin of Bas. and from Scaliger, Robertus Constantinus, and Salmasius, with a few due to the editor himself. The commentary, according to Sir William Thiselton-Dyer, is 'botanically monumental and fundamental.'
St. Stackhouse, Oxford, 1813: a prettily printed edition with some illustrations; text founded on Ald. The editor seems to have been a fair botanist, but an indifferent scholar, though occasionally he hits on a certain emendation. The notes are short and generally of slight value. The book is however of interest, as being apparently the only work on the 'Enquiry' hitherto published in England.
Spr. Kurt Sprengel, Halle, 1822. This is not an edition of the text, but a copious commentary with German translation. Sprengel was a better botanist than scholar; Wimmer speaks disparagingly of his knowledge of Greek and of the translation. (See note prefixed to the Index of Plants.)
W. Fr. Wimmer: (1) An edition with introduction, analysis, critical notes, and Sprengel's identifications of the plant-names; Breslau, 1842.
(2) A further revised text with Latin translation, apparatus criticus, and full indices; the Index Plantarum gives the identifications of Sprengel and Fraas; Didot Library, Paris, n.d.
(3) A reprint of this text in Teubner's series, 1854.
These three books are an indispensable supplement to Schneider's great work. The notes in the edition of 1842 are in the main critical, but the editor's remarks on the interpretation of thorny passages are often extremely acute, and always worth attention. The mass of material collected by Schneider is put into an accessible form. Wimmer if far more conservative in textual criticism than Schneider, and has a better appreciation of Theophrastus' elliptical and somewhat peculiar idiom, though some of his emendations appear to rest on little basis. A collation of the Paris MSS. (P and P2) was made for Wimmer; for the readings of U and M he relied on Schneider, who, in his fifth volume, had compared U with Bodaeus' edition. A fresh collation of the rather exiguous manuscript authorities is perhaps required before anything like a definitive text can be provided. Wimmer's Latin translation is not very helpful, since it slurs the difficulties: the Didot edition, in which it appears, is disfigured with numerous misprints.
(Sandys' History of Classical Scholarship (ii. p. 380) mentions translations into Latin and Italian by Bandini; of this work I know nothing.)
C. Other Commentators
R.Const. Robertus Constantinus (see above). Added notes of his own, many of them valuable, which are given with Scaliger's in Bodaeus' edition.
Salm. Salmasius (Claude de Saumaise). Made many happy corrections of Theophrastus' text in his Exercitationes Plinianae.
Palm. Jacobus Pamerius (Jacques de Paulmier). His Exercitationes in optimos auctores Graecos (Leyden, 1668) contain a certain number of acute emendations; Wimmer considers that he had a good understanding of Theophrastus' style.
Meurs. Johannes Meursius (Jan de Meurs). Author of some critical notes on Theophrastus published at Leyden in 1640; also of a book on Crete.
Dalec. Jean Jacques D'Aléchamps the botanist. Author of Historia plantarum universalis, Lyons, 1587, and editor of Pliny's Natural History.
Mold. J. J. P. Moldenhauer. Author of Tentamen in Historiam plantarum Theophrasti, Hamburg, 1791. This book, which I have not been able to see and know only from Wimmer's citations, contains, according to him, very valuable notes on the extremely difficult Introduction to the 'Historia' (Book I. chaps, i.-ii.).
II.—Theophrastus' Life and Works
Such information as we possess concerning the life of Theophrastus comes mainly from Diogenes Laertius' Lives of the Philosophers, compiled at least four hundred years after Theophrastus' death; it is given therefore here for what it may be worth; no intrinsic improbability in most of what Diogenes records.
He was born in 370 b.c. at Eresos in Lesbos; at an early age he went to Athens and there became a pupil of Plato. It may be surmised that it was from him that he first learnt the importance of that principle of classification which runs through all his extant works, including even the brochure known as the 'Characters' (if it is rightly ascribed to him), and which is ordinarily considered as characteristic of the teaching of his second master Aristotle. But in Plato's own later speculations classification had a very important place, since it was by grouping things in their 'natural kinds' that, according to his later metaphysic, men were to arrive at an adumbration of the 'ideal forms' of which these kinds are the phenomenal counterpart, and which constitute the world of reality. Whether Theophrastus gathered the principle of classification from Plato or from his fellow-pupil Aristotle, it appears in his hand to have been for the first time systematically applied to the vegetable world. Throughout his botanical works the constant implied question is 'What is difference?', 'What is its essential nature?', viz. 'What are the characteristic features in virtue of which a plant may be distinguished from other plants, and which make up its own 'nature' or essential character?
Theophrastus appears to have been only Aristotle's junior by fifteen years. On Plato's death he became Aristotle's pupil, but, the difference in age not being very great, he and his second master appear to have been on practically equal terms. We are assured that Aristotle was deeply attached to his friend; while as earnest of an equally deep attachment on the other side Theophrastus took Aristotle's son under his particular care after his father's death. Aristotle died at the age of sixty-three, leaving to his favourite pupil his books, including the autographs of his own works, and his garden in the grounds of the Lyceum. The first of these bequests, if the information is correct, is of great historical importance; it may well be that we owe to Theophrastus the publication of some at least of his master's voluminous works. And as to the garden it is evident that it was here that the first systematic botanist made many of the observations which are recorded in his botanical works. Diogenes has preserved his will, and there is nothing in the terms of this interesting document to suggest that it is not authentic. Of special interest is the provision made for the maintenance of the garden; it is bequeathed to certain specified friends and to those who will spend their time with them in learning and philosophy; the testator is to be buried in it without extravagant expense, a custodian is appointed, and provision is made for the emancipation of various gardeners, so soon as they have earned their freedom by long enough service.
According to Diogenes Theophrastus died at the age of eighty-five. He is made indeed to say in the probably spurious Preface to the 'Characters' that he is writing in his ninety-ninth year; while St. Jerome's Chronicle asserts that he lived to the age of 107. Accepting Diogenes' date, we may take it that he died about 285 b.c.; it is said that he complained that "we die just when we are beginning to live." His life must indeed have been a remarkably full and interesting one, when we consider that he enjoyed the personal friendship of two such men as Plato and Aristotle, and that he had witnessed the whole of the careers of Philip and Alexander of Macedon. To Alexander indeed he was directly indebted; the great conqueror had not been for nothing the pupil of the encyclopaedic Aristotle. He took with him to the East scientifically trained observers, the results of whose observations were at Theophrastus' disposal. Hence it is that his descriptions of plants are not limited to the flora of Greece and the Levant; to the reports of Alexander's followers he owed his accounts of such plants as the cotton-plant, banyan, pepper, cinnamon, myrrh and frankincense. It has been a subject of some controversy whence he derived his accounts of plants whose habitat was nearer home. Kirchner, in an able tract, combats the contention of Sprengel that his observations even of the Greek flora were not made at first hand. Now at this period the Peripatetic School must have been a very important educational institution; Diogenes says that under Theophrastus it numbered two thousand pupils. Moreover we may fairly assume that Alexander, from his connexion with Aristotle, was interested in it, while we are told that at a later time Demetrius Phalereus assisted it financially. May we not hazard and guess that a number of the students were appropriately employed in the collection of facts and observations? The assumption that a number of 'travelling students' were so employed would at all events explain certain references in Theophrastus' botanical works. He says constantly 'The Macedonians say.' 'The men of Mount Ida say' and so forth. Now it seems hardly probable that he is quoting from written treatises by Macedonian or Idaean writers. It is at least a plausible suggestion that in such references he is referring to reports of the districts in question contributed by students of the school. In that case 'The Macedonians say' would mean 'This is what our representative was told in Macedonia.' It is further noticeable that the tense used is sometimes past, e.g. 'The men of Mount Ida said'; an obvious explanation of this is supplied by the above conjecture. It is even possible that in one place (3. 12. 4.) the name of one of these students has been preserved.
Theophrastus, like his master, was a very voluminous writer; Diogenes gives a list of 227 treatises from his pen, covering most topics of human interest, as Religion, Politics, Ethics, Education, Rhetoric, Mathematics, Astronomy, Logic, Meteorology and other natural sciences. His oratorical works enjoyed a high reputation in antiquity. Diogenes attributes to him ten works on Rhetoric, of which one On Style was known to Cicero, who adopted from it the classification of styles into the 'grand,' the 'plain,' and the 'intermediate.'[4] Of one or two other lost works we have some knowledge. Thus the substance of an essay on Piety is preserved in Porphyry de Abstinentia.[5] The principal works still extant are the nine books of the Enquiry into Plants, and the six books on the Causes of Plants; these seem to be complete. We have also considerable fragments of treatises entitled:—of Sense-perception and objects of Sense, of Stones, of Fire, of Odours, of Winds, of Weather-Signs, of Weariness, of Dizziness, of Sweat, Metaphysics, besides a number of unassigned excerpts. The style of these works, as of the botanical books, suggests that, as in the case of Aristotle, what we possess consists of notes for lectures or notes taken of lectures. There is no literary charm: the sentences are mostly compressed and highly elliptical, to the point sometimes of obscurity. It follows that translation, as with Aristotle, must be to some extent paraphrase. The thirty sketches of 'Characters' ascribed to Theophrastus, which have found many imitators, and which are well known in this country through Sir R. Jebb's brilliant translation, stand on a quite different footing; the object of this curious and amusing work is discussed in Sir R. Jebb's Introduction and in the more recent edition of Edmonds and Austen. Well may Aristotle, as we are assured, have commended his pupil's diligence. It is said that, when he retired from the headship of the school, he handed it over to Theophrastus. We are further told that the latter was once prosecuted for impiety, but the attack failed; also that he was once banished from Athens for a year, it does not appear under what circumstances. He was considered an attractive and lively lecturer. Diogenes' sketch ends with the quotation of some sayings attributed to him, of which the most noteworthy are 'Nothing costs us so dear as the waste of time,' 'One had better trust an unbridled horse than an undigested harangue.' He was followed to his grave, which we may hope was, in accordance with his own wish, in some peaceful corner of the Lyceum garden, by a great assemblage of his fellow townsmen.
The principal references in the notes are to the following ancient authors:—
| Apollon. | Apollonius, Historia Miraculorum. |
| Arist. | Aristotle.Bekker, Berlin, 1831. |
| Arr. | Arrian. Hercher (Teubner). |
| Athen. | Athenaeus.Dindorf, Leipzig, 1827. |
| Col. | Columella, de re rustica.Schneider. Leipzig, 1794. |
| Diod. | Diodorus. |
| Diosc. | Pedanius Dioscurides, de materia medica.Wellman, Berlin, 1907. |
| Geop. | Geoponica.Beckh (Teubner), 1895. |
| Nic. | Nicander, Theriaca.Schneider, Leipzig, 1816. |
| Pall. | Palladius, de re rustica. Schneider, Leipzig, 1795. |
| Paus. | Pausanias.Schubart (Teubner), Leipzig, 1881. |
| Plin. | Plinius, Naturalis Historia.Mayhoff (Teubner), 1887.(Reference by book and section.) |
| Plut. | Plutarch.Hercher (Teubner), Leipzig, 1872. |
| Scyl. | Scylax, Periplus.Vossius, Amsterdam, 1639. |