Theophrastus and His World

By Paul Millett

This is the first extended study in English of Theophrastus' Characters, one of the briefest but also most influential works to survive from classical antiquity. Since the seventeenth century, the Characters has served as a model and an inspiration for authors as diverse as La Bruyère, Thackeray, George Eliot and Elias Canetti. This study aims to locate Theophrastus and his Characters with respect to the political and philosophical worlds of Athens in the late fourth century, focusing on later imitators in order to provide clues to reading the Theophrastan original. Special attention is paid to the problems and possibilities of the Characters as testimony to the culture and society of contemporary Athens, integrating the text into the extensive fragments and testimonies of Theophrastus' other writings. The implications for the historian of the elusive humour of the Characters, dependent in large measure on the device of caricature, are explored in detail. What emerges is a picture of the complex etiquette appropriate for upper-class citizens in the home, the streets and other public places in Athens where individuals were on display. Through their resolutely shaming behaviour, the Characters illuminate the honour for which citizens should, by implication, be striving. A key theme of the study is Theophrastus' ambivalent position in Athens: a distinguished philosopher and head of the Lyceum, yet still subject to the disabilities of his metic status.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cambridge Philological Society
• Release date: Aug 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781913701390

Book preview

THEOPHRASTUS AND HIS WORLD

This is the first extended study in English of Theophrastus’ Characters, one of the briefest but also most influential works to survive from classical antiquity. Since the seventeenth century, the Characters has served as a model and an inspiration for authors as diverse as La Bruyère, Thackeray, George Eliot and Elias Canetti. This study aims to locate Theophrastus and his Characters with respect to the political and philosophical worlds of Athens in the late fourth century, focusing on later imitators in order to provide clues to reading the Theophrastan original. Special attention is paid to the problems and possibilities of the Characters as testimony to the culture and society of contemporary Athens, integrating the text into the extensive fragments and testimonia of Theophrastus’ other writings. The implications for the historian of the elusive humour of the Characters, dependent in large measure on the device of caricature, are explored in detail. What emerges is a picture of the complex etiquette appropriate for upper-class citizens in the home, the streets and other public places in Athens where individuals were on display. Through their resolutely shaming behaviour, the Characters illuminate the honour for which citizens should, by implication, be striving. A key theme of the study is Theophrastus’ ambivalent position in Athens: a distinguished philosopher and head of the Lyceum, yet still subject to the disabilities of his metic status.

Paul Millett is Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Downing College

CAMBRIDGE CLASSICAL JOURNAL

PROCEEDINGS OF THE CAMBRIDGE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY

SUPPLEMENTARY VOLUME 33

THEOPHRASTUS AND HIS WORLD

PAUL MILLETT

Published by The Cambridge Philological Society.

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© The Cambridge Philological Society, 2007

ISBN: 978 0 906014 32 5

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Artemidoro: What book is this?

Ofelia: I was reading Theophrastus’ Characters just now.

What an incomparable work!

Artemidoro: For my part, I was reading the Dialogues of the divine Plato,

which I always have upon me.

La grotta di Trofonio (1785)

Act I, Scene IV

Libretto by Giambattista Casti

Music by Salieri

In Memoriam

Crispin Wendler Brown

1967–1987

CONTENTS

Preface

1 The kairos of the Characters?

2 Theophrastus of Eresus and Theophrastus Such

3 Theophrastus the metic

4 That’s entertainment?

5 They do things differently there?

6 Corruption and the Characters

7 Honour bright

8 Etiquette for an élite: at home

9 Etiquette for an élite: away

10 Face to face in the Agora

11 Conspicuous co-operation?

12 Theophrastus Nonesuch

Endnotes

Appendix 1

Naming the Characters

Appendix 2

Characters in Punch magazine

Appendix 3

Classical allusion in Thackeray’s Book of Snobs

Bibliography

Index of references

PREFACE

This piece was first promised some sixteen years ago. Early versions were read to research seminars in Oxford and Cambridge. Although no one probably now remembers, I am grateful for suggestions offered on those occasions. Successive drafts of the present work have been read by Paul Cartledge, Nancy Henry, James Diggle, Robin Lane Fox, Robin Osborne, Ivo Volt, David Sedley, and Michael Pakaluk; all of whom offered valuable advice. The criticism provided by the anonymous reader for the Cambridge Philological Society was thoughtful and constructive. Andrew Goodson has been an acute and informative copy-editor. I have received bibliographical help from Richard Bowring, Rosemary Dean, Karen Lubar, Laura McClure, Marden Nichols, Harriet Moynihan, Stephen Todd, and Anita White. Mark Bradley, Richard Fletcher, John Patterson, David Pratt, Peter Rhodes, Malcolm Schofield, Chris Stray, and Penny Hatfield (Archivist of Eton College) responded willingly to specific enquiries. In the case of Philip Rubery, the contribution was musicological. My greatest obligation is to James Diggle, whose text, translation and commentary surely mark a new era in the study of the Characters.

I am grateful indeed to the Cambridge Classical Faculty for making it possible for me to dispense with College administrative duties during the Lent Term, 2006.

I have tried to make my text accessible for non-specialists, with more technical material and detailed argument placed in endnotes which are correspondingly longer. For the same reason, all Greek words and phrases in the text are translated or transliterated. FHS&G identifies numbered passages in the indispensable pair of volumes, Theophrastus of Eresus: sources for his life, writings, thought and influence, edited by W. W. Fortenbaugh, P. M. Huby, R. W. Sharpies and Dimitri Gutas. Their translations are adopted in the text and notes, with occasional modifications.

It is one of the faults of Theophrastus’ Tactless Man’ that ‘When the audience has taken the point, he gets up to explain it all over again’. It frequently happens that a particular part of a Character provides material for two or more separate arguments. Where this is the case, while wary of seeming tactless, I thought it more convenient for the reader on each occasion to quote, paraphrase or summarize the appropriate passage rather then merely cross-reference (though there is still plenty of that). To avoid possible confusion, Characters refers to the work by Theophrastus; Characters to the thirty or so individual studies that make up the work. A complete list of the Greek names of the Characters and the English equivalents which I have used can be found in Appendix 1.

I have tended in the text and notes to refer to this monograph as an ‘essay’. This reflects not only its length, but also the idea of an attempted exploration of the world of Theophrastus, for which there seemed to be no clear precedent. The reader will find summaries of the structure that emerged and of the overall argument of the essay respectively at the ends of Chapters 1 and 12.

For several years in the 1980s I asked my first-year pupils in Classics to write an essay on what the Characters had to offer the sceptical historian. The one from whom I learnt most was Crispin Wendler Brown of Queens’ College, to whose memory this essay is dedicated.

1

THE KAIROS OF THE CHARACTERS?

The subject of Cicero’s Brutus is the history of Roman oratory, presented as a threeway debate between Brutus, Atticus and Cicero himself. Although the setting for their encounter is Cicero’s house in Rome, classical Greece is never far away. The three friends sit themselves down on a lawn, close by a statue of Plato (§24). By the time we join the debate, Cicero has provided, as a preliminary, a rapid tour of the development of rhetoric at Athens (§§26–52), including lavish praise of Theophrastus for his elegance and charm as an orator (§§37–8). Theophrastus is about to put in a second, rather different appearance. Approximately half-way through the discussion (§§169–72), Cicero turns aside from Roman orators to list those among ‘Allies and Latins’. Brutus interrupts: what are the characteristics of these (as it were) ‘foreign orators’? Cicero responds: they are no different from ‘City orators’, save that their oratory lacks quasi-urban colouring. Brutus asks what Cicero means by this, and is answered with an illustration. Cicero recalls having heard how Titus Tinca of Placentia in northern Italy got involved in a witty exchange with Quintus Granius the Roman auctioneer. Although Tinca was most amusing, he was completely upstaged by Granius through some ‘indefinable vernacular flavour’.

Cicero continues: ‘So I am not surprised at what is said to have happened to Theophrastus when he pressed a little old lady (cum percontaretur ex anicula quadam) about the price for which she would sell a certain item. She answered, and added, "Foreigner (hospes), it’s not possible [to sell it] for less." It annoyed him that he did not escape the appearance of being a foreigner, although he spent his life in Athens and of all people spoke excellent [Attic Greek]. Similarly, in my opinion, there is among us a certain accent characteristic of the people of the City [of Rome], just as there, of the people of Athens.’ The essence of the anecdote is also reported by Quintilian (8.1.2), who adds that Theophrastus was rumbled because, in respect of just one word, he spoke ‘too much like a person from Attica.’¹

It is, of course, highly unlikely that this encounter ever took place; at least, not as recorded by Cicero and Quintilian.² Rather, the anecdote embodies themes that are central to this exploration of ‘Theophrastus and his world’. First, there is Theophrastus’ own ambivalent relationship with the world of Athens (bom and brought up at Eresus on Lesbos), exemplified by his cultivation of Attic Greek and apparent desire not to seem an outsider. Then there is the sense of failure and even shame implied by his annoyance at being found out: the upper-class philosopher is disconcerted (and bested) by a market-trader who also happens to be a woman, and a little old one at that. The difference in status, which she unerringly subverts, could hardly be more marked as the ‘divine speaker’ is brought back to earth with a bump.³ Finally, the context of the encounter, so revealing of character, exploits a concrete and inherently plausible incident drawn from the ordinary business of life in the city of Athens. To anticipate, the old lady is presented as conforming to Theophrastus’ own implied ‘etiquette of exchange’; namely, that those selling should be willing to name a price, rather than asking what the buyer will give. The allusion here is to one of Theophrastus’ Characters, the ‘Self-Centred Man’ (15.4), who cannot speak people fair: ‘If he is selling something, he doesn’t tell customers how much he will sell it for, but asks What will it fetch?’.⁴

The discussion that follows is based mainly, but by no means exclusively, on the world of the Characters. My own preoccupation with the ‘Characters-as-history’ goes back to earlier work on Lending and borrowing in ancient Athens (1991), where Theophrastus’ Characters loomed large, confirming the frequency and clarifying the nature of credit-relations between citizens. Here and elsewhere, individual Characters have also helped (as it seemed to me) to illuminate key questions concerning Athenian economy and society.⁵ If the time now seems right for a more systematic exploration of the historical possibilities of the Characters, that is the result of a conjunction of circumstances: a kairos or opportune moment for Theophrastus and his Characters.

Above all there is the conviction of the need to contextualize the Characters. Not by literary genre in terms of possible antecedents, as often attempted in the past; but rather by trying (as it were) to explicate Theophrastus through Theophrastus. Although much has been lost from the 225 or so items recorded in the biography by Diogenes Laertius (5.42–50 = FHS&G 1.68–291), plenty remains.⁶ ‘Project Theophrastus’, established in 1979, aims to provide texts, translations and commentaries for the less familiar monographs and all the fragments. The six volumes appearing to date have already transformed approaches to Theophrastus, turning into a realistic proposition the reading of the Characters against the background of Theophrastus’ other surviving works and fragments.⁷

Relevant to the reassessment of the Characters are three very different works of literature and history. George Eliot’s Impressions of Theophrastus Such was her last published work, appearing in 1879, the year before her death. Although it has been regarded as inferior to Eliot’s other writings and neglected accordingly, editions by Nancy Henry (1994) and D. J. Enright (1995) may hint at renewed interest. The literary relationship between Theophrastus and Theophrastus Such remains problematic, but Eliot’s reworking of the genre prompts questions of origins, authorship and cultural identity that shed a tantalizing light on the Characters. From 2000 there is Horden and Purcell’s challenging work on The corrupting sea, as (following Plato) they label the Mediterranean. Apart from unsettling apparently secure ideas about Mediterranean economy and society, their book seems simultaneously to provide a framework for articulating the world of Theophrastus and also characterizing the Characters.⁸ Finally, and most immediately relevant to Theophrastus, there is the recent appearance of James Diggle’s text of the Characters (2004), complete with translation and commentary.⁹

Diggle’s synoptic introduction enables discussion of the usual preliminaries to be abbreviated, if not by-passed. The reader is presented with concise, annotated treatments of Theophrastus’ life and times, the nature and purpose of the Characters, its stylistic merits, date and transmission. Suffice it to say that the work commonly called the Characters (more accurately charakteres ethikoi or ‘Behavioural Types’) consists of thirty short caricatures of character-types as they might be met in the imagination in the houses and on the streets of Athens: all male, and all more-or-less negative. It seems likely that Theophrastus was among the first (possibly the first) to cite behaviour, as opposed to speech or physiognomy, as an aspect of charakter with the sense of the differentiating feature of a type.¹⁰ A brief, inconsequential preface gives the author’s age as ninety-nine and promises good as well as bad characters. Each characterization that follows consists of a one-word title, an abstract definition of the quality concerned, a sequence of concrete examples of appropriate behaviour, and, in certain cases, a moralizing conclusion.

Virtually everything about the text as transmitted is problematic. The Preface has long been recognized as spurious; condemned by both language and content. More recently, the definitions and conclusions have been decisively questioned and identified as Byzantine additions. Moreover, the text as a whole exhibits deep-seated corruption and there are signs of extensive interpolation. The aponenoemenos or ‘Morally Degraded Man’ (6) fairly illustrates of the extent of the problem. Apart from lame definition and epilogue, more than one third of the remainder has been identified as interpolated (§§2, 7), and half a line seems hopelessly corrupt (§3).¹¹ It is not even clear how many characters are actually represented: almost certainly thirty-one, and probably thirty-two. As transmitted, the text contains parts of two Characters (‘Obsequious Man’ 5.6–10; ‘Offensive Man’ 19.7–10) not corresponding to the title or the rest of the Character. In the case of the ‘Obsequious Man’, the corruption dates back at least as far as a papyrus from Herculaneum.¹² Small wonder the Characters has attracted the attention of major figures in classical philology across four centuries and more: Stephanus (1557), Casaubon (1592), Coray (1799), Cobet (1859), Jebb (1870), Wilamowitz (1902), Diels (1909), Pasquali (1919), and Immisch (1923).¹³

If scholarly interest is represented in the range of texts and commentaries, the immediate and enduring appeal of the Characters (despite all textual difficulties) is reflected in a host of translations across a variety of languages. Appendix I to this study tabulates a selection of the more recent commentaries and translations, cross-referencing renderings of character-titles. Out of historical interest, the early English and French translations by Healey (1616) and La Bruyère (1687) are also included.¹⁴ These changing perceptions and representations of moral values constitute in themselves a fragment of modern cultural history. While, amongst others, the qualities of the ‘Superstitious Man’ (16), ‘Distrustful Man’ (18)and ‘Arrogant Man’ (24)remain more-or-less constant, assimilation into English of other Characters alters through time. bdeluria (11) prompts the sequence: obscene, gross, buffoon, offensive, obnoxious, repulsive; anaisthesia (14): blockish, stupid, feckless, obtuse; authadeia (15): stubborn, surly, hostile, self-centred; aedia (20): tedious, unpleasant, ill-bred, tiresome, bad-taste, disagreeable. Of course, there are also cases where modern variation reflects Greek concepts which, through cultural specificity, defy straightforward translation. aponoia (6) presents a perennial problem (reckless, wilful disreputableness, the rough, outcast or demoralized man, shameless man, the man who has lost all sense), while renderings of philoponeria (29) tend towards the archaic (patron of rascals, friendship with scoundrels, patronage of scoundrels, friend of villains).¹⁵ Here is our first encounter with an underlying theme of this study: interplay between perceptions of the Characters as both strikingly familiar and disconcertingly different.

Several versions of the Characters can lay claim to a status approaching historical artefacts. The editio princeps by Willibald Pirckheimer (1527) was appropriately dedicated to Albrecht Dürer, delineator of character in another medium. But pride of place goes to Isaac Casaubon, whose text, commentary and Latin translation served to introduce the Characters to an educated European public. The first edition appeared in 1592, with further versions in 1599 and 1612. One likely outcome was John Healey’s translation of 1616, the earliest rendering of the Characters into English; another was the appearance of Joseph Hall’s explicitly Theophrastan Characters of Vertues and Vices. Hall’s imitation appeared in 1608; in 1610 it was translated into French, quite possibly the first literary work in English to receive that distinction, and just possibly a remote inspiration for Jean de La Bruyère, whose massively influential translation and reworking of Theophrastus first appeared in 1688.¹⁶ The relationship of La Bruyère to Theophrastus is explored at length by Octave Navarre (1914), whose own commentary on the Characters from 1921 is introduced as a post-War ‘tract for the times’, defending the claims of French scholarship against ‘le prestige de la science germanique’ (vi).¹⁷ At the other end of the translation timescale, Vellacott’s Penguin Classic of 1967 surely introduced the Characters to more English readers than any version before or since.¹⁸ By contrast, Edmonds and Austen describe their innovative commentary from 1904 as ‘intended mainly for the Sixth Forms of Public Schools’ (v). Hence their ‘slight alterations to render the texts more readable’; which is to say, bowdlerized.¹⁹ But even more revealing of its place and time is Jebb’s celebrated edition, first published in 1870 and revised by Sandys in 1909. If Charles Hignett’s Xerxes’ invasion of Greece was described by Momigliano as being (after Zuleika Dobson) ‘the best book about Oxford’, Jebb’s Characters has plenty to tell about Victorian Cambridge; or, at least, the inhibitions of its upper-middle class.²⁰

The ostensible purpose of Jebb’s edition, subtitled An English translation, was to introduce the ‘lighter traits’ of the Characters to Greekless readers; his commentary relates not to the Greek original, but the text as translated. Even so, as editor, he was at great pains to establish what Theophrastus actually wrote, including a critical appendix of some fifty pages (161–216). Yet there are a dozen or so passages which, through perceived impropriety, Jebb felt ‘unwilling to translate’, and are omitted in both in English and Greek (viii). These cuts are not signalled in the text, on the ground that this ‘would nearly have been equivalent to printing them in capital letters’. Predictable victims of the excision-knife are the ‘Repulsive Man’ with his deliberate exhibitionism (11,2), likewise (though exposing himself unwittingly) the ‘Country Bumpkin’ (4.7), the ‘Late Learner’ visiting a hetaira (27.9), and even the ‘Obtuse Man’ going to the lavatory in the middle of the night and being bitten by the neighbour’s dog (14.5). But harder to understand, even making due allowance for high ‘Victorian values’, are omissions which include belching in the theatre: the ‘Repulsive Man’ again (11.3); or telling father in all apparent innocence that mother is asleep in the bedroom: the ‘Overzealous Man’ simply stating the obvious (13.8). Also omitted are having a hairy body, not taking a bath at bedtime, and scratching (or chewing) while sacrificing. Such are a few of the failings of the ‘Offensive Man’ (19), to whom Jebb takes such exception that he gets cut down to just eight lines of Greek; eighteen lines in Diggle’s version for the twenty-first century.²¹

****

In the chapters that follow, attempts are made to isolate the characteristics of the Characters, locate the work in suitable contexts, and identify its uses for the historian. Chapter 2 compares Theophrastus’ Characters against a range of later imitators, focusing on George Eliot’s Impressions of Theophrastus Such as providing clues to reading the Theophrastan original. Issues emerging from Eliot’s reworking include the presence of the author and the implicit ideology shared by Theophrastus and his original intended audience. This leads, in Chapter 3, to a consideration of Theophrastus’ headship of the Lyceum while a metic in Athens after Alexander. Chapter 4 tries to supply occasions for the Characters that combine its veiled philosophical content with obvious entertainment value. Less formal interludes in Theophrastus’ virtuoso lectures are offered, alongside symposia, as possible circumstances for performance of the Characters. An audience of wealthy, would-be philosophers has implications for presentation of the Characters: themselves conceived as citizens of good standing, but deficient in paideia. The elusive humour of the Characters is associated with caricature, which introduces the problem of how the text may be read by historians. This theme is further explored in Chapter 5, addressing the issue of ‘similarity and difference’ between ancient and contemporary character. Also addressed are consequential attempts to relate the content of the Characters to events in Athens, and detailed analyses of individual Characters.

Chapters 6 and 7 introduce Horden and Purcell’s The corrupting sea as a text against which the Characters might fruitfully be read, illuminating the connectivity of Athens and its inhabitants within the wider Mediterranean world, and confirming ways in which honour and shame are fundamental concerns for the Characters. Chapters 8 and 9 draw together strands of the Characters’ behaviour, constructing systems of etiquette appropriate for the home, the streets, and other public places where individuals were on display. Something of the complex of interpersonal relations in Theophrastus’ Athens is exemplified through the Characters’ encounters in the Agora, the subject of Chapter 10. In Chapter 11, the attitude of the Characters towards work and leisure is measured against Veblen’s The theory of the leisure class (1899); the Characters themselves are further compared and contrasted with Aristotle’s Great-Hearted Man. In both cases, differences prove ultimately more illuminating than similarities. The final chapter re-presents the broad ideas developed in the essay, invokes Norbert Elias on the sociological significance of etiquette, and closes with speculation over the ongoing appeal of the Characters.

2

THEOPHRASTUS OF ERESUS AND THEOPHRASTUS SUCH

‘Vertue is not loved enough; because she is not seene: & Vice loseth much detestation; because her uglinesse is secret. … What need wee more, than to discover these two to the world? This Worke shall save the labour of exhorting and disswasion. I have done it, as I could; following that ancient Master of Morality, who thought this the fittest taske for the ninety and ninth yeare of his age, and the profitablest monument that he could leave for a fare-well to his Grecians.’ So wrote Joseph Hall in ‘The Proem’ to his Characters of Vertues and Vices of 1608, taking at face value the preface to Theophrastus’ Characters. Testimony to the ongoing appeal of the Characters is a vigorous and varied afterlife in the hands of imitators, of whom Hall is the earliest and arguably the best. The whole scene of The Theophrastan ‘Character’ is masterfully surveyed by J. W. Smeed (1985), who ‘cannot think of a smaller book with greater influence’ (5). This is borne out by his identification and elucidation of several hundred relevant texts from antiquity to the later twentieth century. The clustering of English imitations from the seventeenth century is discussed in detail in an older work by Benjamin Boyce (1947). Both books naturally emphasize ways in which imitators develop and diverge from the Theophrastan model. In what follows the process of literary evolution is reversed, with imitators being deployed to demonstrate what is distinctive about the Theophrastan original. The range of character-books I have consulted in detail is necessarily limited: Hall (1608), Overbury (1622), Earle (1628), La Bruyère (1688), Thackeray (1846–7), and Canetti (1979); but still sufficient to throw into relief the technique, range, and content of Theophrastus’ original.²² The uses for the Classicist of George Eliot’s Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879) are, however, different in character.

Twentieth-century commentators on the Characters are naturally drawn to an observation made by Theophrastus Such himself (16): ‘I gather, too, from the undeniable testimony of his [Aristotle’s] disciple Theophrastus that there were bores, ill-bred persons and detractors even in Athens, of species remarkably corresponding to the English, and not yet made endurable by being classic…’ The passage is invariably cited incomplete, out of context, and without further comment.²³ But the quotation cannot be left to speak for itself; not least, with its riddling semi-self-reference. The context is the second chapter, ‘Looking Backward’, which, along with the opening chapter ‘Looking Inward’, seems programmatic, serving to introduce to readers the fictional author: introverted, middle-aged, the bachelor son of a country clergyman with frustrated literary ambitions. He opens chapter 1 with a question: ‘It is my habit to give an account to myself of the characters I meet with: can I give a true account of my own?’ His acquaintances are as forgetful of his biographical revelations as of a ‘dead philosopher’, yet they are still aware of things about him of which he himself remains ignorant. These might include singing out of tune, the sound of his foreign accent in the ears of a native speaker, and persevering in behaviour which antagonizes the woman he is pursuing. From this he concludes that others know secrets about him unguessed by himself. By way of illustration, he introduces a miniature case-study (2). As a child he expended much effort in learning the hornpipe, being proud of his supposed superiority as a dancing pupil. Now he can picture the merriment of those watching his solemn face and ridiculous legs. ‘What kind of hornpipe am I dancing now?’ While laughing at his fellow-men, he knows he must necessarily be among those being laughed at. The chapter concludes how (13): ‘in noting the weakness of my acquaintances, I am conscious of my fellowship with them. … But there is a loving laughter in which the only recognized superiority is that of the ideal self… holding the mirror and the scourge for our own pettiness as well as our neighbours.’

Much of the detail here, especially the opening page or so, is crypto-Theophrastan, including his bachelor status and the image of the self-betraying, non-native speaker.²⁴ There is also an autobiographical subtext: the provincial background that Eliot gives to Theophrastus Such echoes both her own extraction and Theophrastus’ non-Athenian origins.²⁵ Of course, not in the least like the original Theophrastus is the narrator’s overt reflexivity.

This self-revelatory motif is developed in ‘Looking Backward’, which paradoxically seems to undercut the work’s classicizing title and introductory pages. The author bemoans the fact that although people never wish for different parents, there is a general desire to return to the past, usually that of Pericles or, even better, the ‘Aeolic lyrists’ (14). But to do so means ignoring what is good in the present, while suppressing ancient unpleasantness. He confesses that he has often wished to be a different person, but not from the conventional classical past. What guarantee is there that, given his modest attainments, he would have fared better there? ‘An age in which every department has its awkward squad seems in my mind’s eye to suit me better. I might have wandered by the Strymon under Philip and Alexander without throwing any new light on method or organizing the sum of human knowledge; on the other hand, I might have objected to Aristotle as too much of a systematizer, and have preferred the freedom of a little selfcontradiction as offering more chances of truth.’ (16) Then follows the passage favoured by commentators on the Characters, quoted above, after which Theophrastus Such adds how he feels ‘better off for possessing Athenian life solely as an inodorous fragment of antiquity.’ There are also derogatory remarks about the ‘plain men of middle stature and slow conversational powers’ of Sappho’s Mytilene, whose ranks he would himself have joined. In this way, the author justifies his preoccupation with persons in the present, as represented in the remaining sixteen chapters. A majority concern society types, often minor authors, who reveal their weaknesses through their writings.²⁶

Although reminiscences of Theophrastus’ technique of characterization do recur, the book is not a collection of characters.²⁷ ‘It is a book about what defines moral character, about how fictional characters are created, and about how the author survives as his or her written text is inherited by successive generations.’ The quotation is from the pathbreaking edition of Theophrastus Such by Nancy Henry (1994) xii, whose introductory essay illuminates issues of authorship, audience, identity, classical past and modern present, all of them relevant to readers of Theophrastus and his Characters.²⁸ As Henry points out (ix), in the absence of plot and development of characters, Eliot’s last work is not a novel along accepted nineteenth-century lines. A sense of unity is generated instead by the voice and vision of the narrator. Critics have struggled (or not even attempted) to assimilate Theophrastus Such to the rest of Eliot’s work (xiv). For Leslie Stephen, writing in his study of George Eliot from 1902, it was (193–5): ‘a curious performance … always apt to become ponderous if not pedantic’, and remaining unread, ‘except from a sense of duty’. Symptomatic of this indifference is a tendency identified by Henry to misquote the title, ‘a practice which ranges from the careless to the comic’ (xiv–xv).²⁹ She argues instead for a reading of the book as both a reflection of Eliot’s earlier writings and also an experimental departure from them (ix), ‘in what looks like early Modernist experimentation through fragmentation of form. … In Impressions George Eliot goes beyond even her last novel, Daniel Deronda, in positing the role of collective memory in the future of national cultures, and the power of literary texts in creating and preserving both.’ The same might and will be said of Theophrastus’ Characters.

One unifying theme is the ambiguity of classical allusion, mediated through Theophrastus Such, who (as we have seen) has mixed feelings about appropriation of the ancient past. Chapter 10, ‘Debasing the Moral Currency’, is ostensibly concerned with the trivializing of classical texts: ‘a burlesque Socrates, with swollen legs, dying in the utterance of cockney puns’ (85). The concluding chapter, ‘The Modern Hep! Hep! Hep!’, refers, without apparent irony, to ‘the glorious commonplaces of historic teaching at our public schools and universities, being happily ingrained in the Greek and Latin Classics’ (144). The underlying theme is the preservation of national memory as an element and means of national greatness: how the freedom of modern Greece is owed ‘to the presence of ancient Greece in the consciousness of European men’, and not to