Realism
Theophrastus is more generally known for his character sketches than for his scientific work, although his treatises on botany represented the highest attainments made by science in that field during antiquity and the Middle Ages. The treatise here translated (ἠθικοὶ χαρακτῆρες) sets forth thirty types of character striking to the Greek mind. They are probably a fragment or extract made by some epitomator from a larger treatise which was suggested by the abstract ethical analyses of Aristotle, as exhibited in the Nicomachean Ethics, and by the concrete dramatic representations of the New Comedy. The stage suggests the form, and Aristotle’s treatise the content. They represent moral and social defects and weaknesses, though not revolting vices, but they do this in a mimetic way by exhibiting persons as acting or speaking. Theophrastus was a contemporary of Philemon and Menander, and his life was spent in the era of the revival of comedy and the elaboration of current moral types for humorous presentation on the stage. So the characters of Theophrastus are, as it were, dramatis personae of his time. He shows us how a given type of man speaks and acts; the dramatization of his characters would require scarcely anything more than stage setting. His portrayal is not satire, but imitation; not caricature, but realistic delineation from life. Moreover, this description of generic types rather than of individuals belongs to the literary fashion of his age. Looked at from this mimetic point of view, The Characters of Theophrastus are historically all the more important, because our knowledge of Menander, the “tenth muse,” is so meagre, resting, as it does, upon scanty Greek fragments and a few Latin adaptations.
Greek Notion of Vice
These thirty sketches at the beginning of the post-classical age do not represent, properly speaking, vices, and yet they were vices to the mind of the Greek, who measured his morality largely by the canons of good form. Any violation of good taste or breach of courtesy was morally vicious. The disposition was to maintain in close unity the natures of beauty and goodness (καλοκἀγαθία); moderns discriminate sharply between the æsthetic and the moral. The social virtues of gentle breeding and the graces of politeness toward their fellow men had for the classical Greeks an ethical nature, as is witnessed in Aristotle’s Ethics. Manners and morals were not sundered. What we call a social weakness, or defect, or boorish crudity, Theophrastus called a vice. It is necessary to bear this in mind when one reads the “moral characters,”[5] as they are called in the Greek title.
Virtues not Delineated
The Subject-matter of the Sketches
Amongst these characters there are no virtues, and one may ask: Why is it that in his portrayal of types Theophrastus has altogether omitted any description of good men? The answer is not to be found in the supposition that such characters were originally included in the work, but have since perished. The real ground for the omission is probably to be discovered in the nature of the conditions under which Theophrastus wrote. These, as we have already indicated, were closely connected with the development of the New Comedy. The portrayal of a good character may be edifying, and may serve the conditions of tragedy, but it does not suit the purposes or surroundings of the comic stage, where the ludicrous elements of weak, eccentric, or faulty personalities are the materials employed. The aim of Theophrastus is both to amuse and to instruct, but his instruction is given by exposing to ridicule certain faults which he elevates into the striking tangibility of concrete character. The serious dignity and excellence of the good man, while it may suit the heroic conditions of the epic, the grave purpose of tragedy, or the aims of moral allegory, offers no material for such sketches as these. Theophrastus has no concern either with the grossly immoral or with the helplessly weak; the former awaken only disgust and hate, while the latter stir only feelings of pity, and neither of these emotions can be kept active in the true art of comedy. Rightly speaking, the art of Theophrastus has to do only with folly or with such eccentricities and weaknesses as have a humorous aspect. And it is only moral imperfections of this sort that we actually find in The Characters.
Ridicule as an Instrument of Instruction
As to the serious function of instruction which Theophrastus no doubt aims to combine with that of entertainment, there is no more skilful mode of inducing moral betterment than the discovery and exposure of the ludicrous. Most men would rather incur the charge of immorality than be exposed to the belittling laugh or derision of a community; they would rather be rogues than fools. The portrait-painter of moral life makes use of the ludicrous when he desires to catch the popular attention, and there is nothing, one may safely say, that makes society at large prick up its ears and fall to gossiping so much as a satire in which some well-known person is subjected to ridicule.
Moral Folly