The text which is transcribed here is the first English translation of Theophrastus’ Characters, printed by George Purslowe in 1616 in a book packaging 1. the Handbook of Epictetus, 2. the Table of Cebes, 3. the Characters. The three works were translated into English by John Healey. His translation of 1 and 2 had been already published in 1610 by the printer George Eld; in 1616, the Characters was added. The prefatory letter of the 1616 volume is written by Thomas Thorpe, who informs the reader that Healey had died before the publication of the book (A3<r>). We have scarce information on Healey’s life (see Considine 2008). He attended St John's College, Cambridge, but left to travel through the Low Countries, France, and Germany to Italy, where he became catholic. After returning to England in 1604, in 1606 he was imprisoned and interrogated in the aftermath of the Gunpowder plot. Healey’s career as translator began in 1609 with two works. One, Philip Mornay, Lord of Plessis, his Teares for the Death of his Sonne (USTC 3003625), is a translation of an essay by Philippe de Mornay. The other, The Discoverie of a New World (USTC 3004029), is freely translated from Joseph Hall’s satire Mundus alter et idem. 1610 was the year of Healey’s main translations. In addition to Epictetus and Cebes, he published St Augustine's The City of God with the long commentary of Juan Luis Vives.

Born in 372/1 or 371/0, Theophrastus was pupil of Aristotle – and according to Diogenes Laertius 5.36, also of Plato – and succeeded him in the direction of the Lyceum after 323 (the sources on his life are collected in Fortenbaugh et al. 1992; cf. Pertsinidis 2018, 10-16). He produced over two hundred works on a wide range of subjects, including literary studies, ethics, botany, human physiology, physics. Among them, the Characters can be considered a work of ethics and psychology, which consist in a collection of thirty sketches of fixed types of human behaviour. While estimates for the date of the work range from the 330s to 319 BCE, this latter date is more popular among editors (Pertsinidis 2018, 15). The commonly used title refers to the Greek noun χαρακτήρ, which normally indicates “the ‘stamp’ or ‘imprint’ on a coin, a distinguishing mark of type or value” and “is also used figuratively, to describe the ‘stamp’ of facial or bodily features, by which kinship or race are distinguished . . . and the ‘stamp’ of speech, as marked by local dialect . . . or by a style of speech . . . or (in later literary criticism) by a style of writing” (Theophrastus 2004, 4). Therefore, the title Characters means generically “marks, distinctive features” and needs to be integrated by the adjective ἠθικοί “moral, expressing a moral character”, which is lost in the manuscripts but is preserved by Diogenes Laertius (Theophrastus 2004, 5).

The content of the Characters and especially its style, which stands out for being lively and informal in comparison to the other works of Theophrastus, have instigated speculation on the purpose of the work. Some scholars have argued for a rhetorical purpose, whereas others have regarded it as an appendix to the theoretical writing of Theophrastus on comedy; or as a preparatory sketch to a larger work on human ethics. The lack of order and the multiformity of the manuscript tradition prompted Jebb to surmise that Theophrastus wrote the Characters for mere amusement of himself and his friends. Pasquali suggested instead that the sketches were designed as lively illustrations for a course on ethics (on the purpose of Characters, see Theophrastus 2004, 12-16 with relevant literature). The interpolations to which the text was subjected in the manuscript tradition (on the transmission of the text, see among others Wilson 1962, Stein 1992, Theophrastus 2004) inevitably induced early modern readers to the assumption that it had a moral and didactic purpose. While the prooemium and the epilogues of several sketches (I, II, III, VI, VIII, X, XXVI, XXVII, XXIX) are now known to be spurious,[1] they were not suspected in early modern times, and they had a moralizing tone. Since in particular the proem promised that by reading the treatise children would become morally better, early modern editors speculated on how the mere depiction of bad characters – as the book only contains negative examples – could contribute to the moral edification of the readers. Their different solutions are examined by Ebner-Landy (2022).

The first edition to appear on the book market was a Latin translation by Lapo da Castiglionchio the Younger (first produced as manuscript in c.1434/5, see Schmitt 1971), printed by Hieronymus Vietor in Wien in 1517. The editio princeps of the Greek text was instead issued in 1527 by Johann Petreius, in Nürnberg, accompanied by the Latin translation by Willibald Pirckheimer. Both these editions contain only 15 sketches. The number of characters was extended to 23 in the 1552 edition by Camotius (Giovanni Battista Camozzi), thanks to a manuscript of a different class (Theophrastus 2004, 52). Other notable sixteenth-century editions were issued by Andreas Cratander in 1531, by Johann Oporinus in 1541 (in Theophrastus’ opera omnia), by Henricus Stephanus (Henri Estienne) in 1557. At the end of the century (1592 and 1599), the two editions of Isaac Casaubon surpassed the previous ones both in quantity and in quality. Drawing on manuscript Pal. gr. 149 (Theophrastus 2004, 46), in 1599 he added sketches XXIV-XXVIII, and drawing on his erudition and acumen, he emended several passages of the transmitted text. The edition of the Greek text was accompanied by a Latin translation.

The 1616 English translation is introduced by a letter to the reader (I1<r> – <I11r>) in which Healey declares that he has translated from Casaubon’s Latin. He then explains in advance the difficult words or concepts that the reader will find in the translation, drawing from Casaubon’s commentary.

Healey’s translation is part of a fascination with character writing, on the model of Theophrastus, which regarded especially England and France (on which see Boyce 1947; Smeed 1985; Petsinidis 2018, 37-40). Two of the most significant English books pertaining to this vogue predated Healey’s translation: Joseph Hall’s Characters of Virtues and Vices (1608), and Thomas Overbury’s book of characters (published posthumously in 1614 without a title). John Earle’s Microcosmography (1628) postdates instead Hearley.

[1] Whether the introductory definitions to the sketches must be considered spurious is controversial. Whilst they have been condemned by Marcus Stein (1992), Fortenbaugh argues that “the majority of the definitions fit well with the sketch that follows” (2011, 139).

Boyce, Benjamin. 1947. The Theophrastan Character in England to 1642: with the Assistance of Notes by Cheser Noyes Greenough. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Considine, John. 2008. "Healey, John". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/12817 (last access 5 August 2024).

Ebner-Landy, Katie. 2002. “Moral instruction by bad example: The first Latin Translations of Theophrastus’ Characters”. Renaissance Studies.

Fortenbaugh, William W. 2011. Theophrastus of Eresus: Commentary Volume 6.1: Sources on Ethics. With Contribution of the Arabic Material by Dimitri Gutas. Leiden and Boston: Brill.

Fortenbaugh, William W., et al. 1992. Theophrastus of Eresus: Sources for his Life, Writings, Thought and Influence. Part one. Leiden, etc.: Brill.

Pertsinidis, Sonia. 2018. Theophrastus’ Characters: A New Introduction. London and New York: Routledge.

Schmitt, Charles B. 1971. “Theophrastus”. In Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum: Mediaeval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries, edited by Paul Oskar Kristeller 2.239–322. Washington: Catholic University of America Press.

Smeed, John William. 1985. The Theophrastan Character: The History of a Literary Genre. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Stein, Markus. 1992. Definition und Schilderung in Theophrasts Charakteren. Stuttgart: Teubner.

Theophrastus. 2004. Characters. Edited with Introduction, Translation and Commentary by James Diggle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wilson, Nigel G. 1962. “The Manuscripts of Theophrastus”. Scriptorium 16: 96-102.