Characters

The text which follows is the first edition of the Greek texts of Characters by Theophrastus of Eresos, printed in England. Born in 372/1 or 371/70, he 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. The Characters can be considered a work of ethics and psychology, which consist of 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 the 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 assume 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 the proem in particular promised that by reading the treatise children would be morally improved, early modern editors speculated on how the 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).

Theophrastus’ first printed edition 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 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), and 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 1604 English edition reproduces the Greek text of Casaubon’s momentous edition with no changes, including the marginal notes with variants (introduced by the Greek formula γρ. for γράφεται “it is written”) and two paratextual phrases: the first before sketch XXIV, to make the reader aware that sketches XXIV-XXVIII are published for the first time (1604, <B4v>); the other to mark the end, τέλος σὺν θεῷ ἀγίῳ “the end, with holy God” (<C2r>). According to the thesis which I have expounded in a previous monograph (Duranti 2022, 14), the adherence to a former critical edition is one of the features which allows us to conclude that this text was a handbook designed solely for educational purposes, without any ambition of improving the transmitted text. The second feature is the absence of the paratexts which are regularly present in philological editions: the name of the editor and especially the dedicatory epistle, as well as the epistle to the reader (this latter being optional). A further hint that this book was used for education is the low number of preserved copies: besides the one from Bodleian library, which is used for the present transcriptions, the USTC catalogue records only one further one, in Columbia University Libraries. As Andrew Pettegree has pointed out, early modern books that survive best are the largest and most expensive ones, which “were primarily intended for reference rather than consecutive reading” (Pettegree 2016, 3). On the contrary, the books which were used intensively, for instance for university courses, “served their purpose, were read for the information they contained, and then discarded”, without making their way into libraries (2). The format of the book is itself telling: it is in quarto, “a format which lends itself to swift publication of pamphlets and other ephemeral genres, . . . or other texts requiring rapid publication and distribution” (Proot 2016, 185), so that it is the most prone to loss over the years (199).

It is also to be noted that the printer of this book, Joseph Barnes, was the first university printer at Oxford (see McKitterick 2002, 189-94; Barnard and Bell 2002, 669), whose lists of published books “were dominated by Protestant dogma, by sermons, by theology, and by educational needs” (McKitterick 2002, 194; emphasis mine). Thus, we can surmise that this book was used for an Oxford university course. The copy from the Bodleian Library has interleaved blank pages for notes and this too is a common feature of educational books. This space was extensively used by a reader, who also wrote marginal notes on the pages containing the Greek text. Although a detailed analysis of the notes is beyond the purposes of this introduction, it is interesting to point out that they mainly rely on Casaubon’s edition: they report both information from his commentary (e.g. the note after <C1v>) and some of his emendations (e.g. at <C1v>), which in Casaubon’s edition are not in the margins, but in the commentary after the text. It is not possible to ascertain whether these notes taken from Casaubon result from university lessons or from private collation of the two books. In the light of what has been said so far, the former hypothesis seems more probable. The reader has further added the number of each sketch, both in an index at the beginning of the book, after the title page, and beside the titles of the sketches.

As regards the Greek types of our edition, they are not related to Casaubon’s. Instead, they resemble the Garamont’s Royal Pica Greek, which was first employed in Robert Estienne’s 1546 edition of the New Testament (on this type see Vervliet 2008, 392).

In conclusion, it is worth remembering that from the beginning of the seventeenth century Theophrastus’ characters inspired a vogue of character writing, especially in England and in France (on which see Boyce 1947; Smeed 1985; Petsinidis 2018, 37-40). In works such as Joseph Hall’s Characters of Virtues and Vices (1608), Thomas Overbury’s book of characters (published posthumously in 1614 without a title), John Earle’s Microcosmography (1628), Jean de La Bruyère’s Les Caractères, ou les Moeurs de ce Siècle (1688), Theophrastus’ model proved so flexible as to be reworked in order to suit various moral, literary, philosophical, satirical, and social purposes. This rich literature, however, did not originate from the ephemeral 1604 edition which is transcribed here, but from the Latin translations which I have mentioned above, and, especially, from the vernacular translations which appeared in seventeenth century: in French (1613, 1688) and in English (1616, 1636).[2]

[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).

[2] The Characters was also translated in German (1606) and in Italian (1629).

Barnard, John and Maureen Bell, “The English Provinces”. In The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, vol. 4 (1557-1695), edited by John Barnard and D.F. McKenzie, with the assistance of Maureen Bell, 665-86. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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

Duranti, Marco. 2022. “Ecclesiae et Rei Publicae”: Greek Drama and the Education of the Ruling Class in Elizabethan England. Verona: Skenè Texts and Studies.

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.

McKitterick, David. 2008. “University Printing at Oxford and Cambridge”. In The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, vol. 4 (1557-1695), edited by John Barnard and D.F. McKenzie, with the assistance of Maureen Bell, 189-205. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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

Pettegree, Andrew. 2016. “The Legion of the Lost. Recovering the Lost Books of Early Modern Europe”. In Lost Books. Reconstructing the Print World of Pre-Industrial Europe, edited by Flavia Bruni and Andrew Pettegree, 1-30. Leiden and Boston: Brill.

Proot, Goran. 2016. “Survival Factors of Seventeenth-Century Hand-Press Books Published in the Southern Netherlands: The Importance of Sheet Counts, Sammelbände and the Role of Institutional Collections”. In Lost Books. Reconstructing the Print World of Pre-Industrial Europe, edited by Flavia Bruni and Andrew Pettegree, 160-201. Leiden and Boston: Brill.

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.

Vervliet, Hendrik D. 2008. The Palaeotypography of the French Renaissance: Selected Papers on Sixteenth-Century Typefaces. Volume 1. Leiden and Boston: Brill.

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