Theophrastus' Characters: An Ancient Take on Bad Behavior

by James Romm, Pamela Mensch (Translator), Andre' Carrilho (Illustrator)

Overview

"These Characters are people we know—they're our quirky neighbors, our creepy bosses, our blind dates from hell. Sharp-tongued Theophrastus, made sharper than ever in this fresh new edition, reminds us that Athenian weirdness is as ageless as Athenian wisdom." –Mary Beard, Professor of Classics at Cambridge University, presenter of BBC's Civilisations

The more things change, the more they stay the same: Theophrastus' Characters, a classical Greek text newly translated for a modern audience, is a joyful festival of fault-finding. The book outlines 30 characters, each crystallizing a human flaw all readers will immediately recognize, and is a humorous survey of failings, follies, and bad behavior taken straight off the streets of Athens and brought into our everyday fraught and divisive social and political scene. Brilliantly illustrated by acclaimed artist Andre Carrilho, this is an irresistible treasure of a book.

WHEN ARISTOTLE WROTE that "comedy is about people worse than ourselves," he may have been recalling a hard-edged gem of a treatise written by his favorite student, Theophrastus. Theophrastus' Characters is a joyous festival of fault-finding: a collection of thirty closely observed personality portraits, defining the full spectrum of human flaws, failings, and follies. With piquant details of speech and behavior taken straight off the streets of ancient Athens, Theophrastus gives us sketches of the mean, vile, and annoying that are comically distorted yet vividly real.

Enlivened by Pamela Mensch's fresh translation—the first widely available English version in over half a century—Theophrastus' Characters transports us to a world populated by figures of flesh and blood, not bronze and marble. The wry, inventive drawings help envoke the cankered wit of this most modern of ancient texts. Lightly but helpfully annotated by classicist James Romm, these thirty thumbnail portraits are startlingly recognizable twenty-three centuries later. The characters of Theophrastus are archetypes of human nature that remain insightful, caustic, and relevant.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780935112375
Publisher:	Callaway
Publication date:	10/01/2018
Pages:	112
Sales rank:	955,050
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.20(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	16 Years

About the Author

James Romm is an author, reviewer, and the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics at Bard College in Annadale, New York. His reviews and essays have appeared in the London Review of Books and The New York Times Book Review, among other publications. His books include The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought (Princeton UniversityPress, 1992), Ghost on the Throne: The Death of Alexander the Great and the Bloody Fight for His Empire (Vintage, 2012), Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero (Vintage, 2014), The Age of Caesar: Five Roman Lives (W. W. Norton, 2017), and How to Die: An Ancient Guide to the End of Life (Princeton UniversityPress, 2018) .

Pamela Mensch is a translator of Herodotus, Plutarch, Arrian, and Diogenes Laertius. Her translated texts include Lives of the Eminent Philosophers: Diogenes Laertius (Oxford UniversityPress, 2018), Alexander the Great: Selections from Arrian, Diodorus, Plutarch, and Quintus Curtius (Hackett, 2005), The Landmark Arrian: The Campaign of Alexander (Anchor, 2012), Lives that Made Greek History: Plutarch (Hackett, 2012), and Histories: Herodotus (Hackett Classics, 2014). She lives in New York City.

André Carrilho is a designer, illustrator, caricaturist, and animator from Lisbon, Portugal. He has shown his work in group and solo exhibitions in Brazil, China, France, Portugal, Spain, and the United States. His work has been published by Harper’s, New York, the New York Times, the New Yorker, and Vanity Fair, among other publications.

Interviews

“The Greek text of Characters is rather messy, with lots of sentences in dispute (or simply unintelligible) due to copyists’ errors in the transmission process. Only a few years ago, a new edition of the Greek text by James Diggle sorted out many of these problems. This new English version by Pamela Mensch takes advantage of that cleaned-up Greek text.”

Editorial Reviews

Theophrastus' Charaktēres, written around 320 BC, consists of thirty "brief and vigorous character sketches delineating moral types derived from studies that Aristotle had made for ethical and rhetorical purposes." These include the Dissembler, Flatterer, Yokel, Sycophant, Newshound, Miser, Busybody, Vulgar Man, Social Climber, Coward, and twenty more. Theophrastus's observations are—with small adaptions—as appropriate today as they were 2,300 years ago.

author of Getting Oriented: A Novel about Japa Wally Wood

"At a time when bad behavior flourishes, even among our leaders, these dead-on portraits of boors, braggarts, and blowhards have never felt more current."

author of Lovers at the Chameleon Club Francine Prose

…usefully pocket-size volume…presenting classic pen-portraits of liars, slanderers and other scoundrels.” – Washington Post

The Washington Post

"There are always people on your gift list that 'have everything' or are so esoteric that they deserve an equally out-of-the box gift. Theophrastus’ Characters: An Ancient Take on Bad Behavior is just that gift."

Coast to Coast Newspaper Gerry Furth-Sides

"If there’s anything new to learn from Characters, a series of personality portraits written by the ancient Greek Theophrastus (c. 371 - c. 287 BC), it is that gluttons, chatterboxes, drunks, idiots, and others are not unique to any time or place in human history. This robust little volume of character sketches has been widely published and translated since its first appearance twenty-three centuries ago….Translated by Pamela Mensch with vibrant pen-and-ink illustrations by acclaimed caricature artist André Carrillo, this edition includes insightful annotations by Bard College classics professor and Guggenheim recipient James Romm.

Literary Features Syndicate

An inherently absorbing, deftly crafted, and wonderfully entertaining read that is both thoughtful and thought-provoking, Theophrastus' Characters: An Ancient Take on Bad Behavior is unreservedly recommended for personal, community, college, and university library collections.

Midwest Book Review

"André Carrilho is one of the most original caricaturists working today, and in Characters his swank surprises in every instance. Ahead of even his own curves, this contemporary artist turns out to be the perfect illustrator to point up the timelessness of the ancient Greek’s witty observations."

author of Mary Astor's Purple Diary Edward Sorel

"These Characters are people we know—they’re our quirky neighbors, our creepy bosses, our blind dates from hell. Sharp-tongued Theophrastus, made sharper than ever in this fresh new edition, reminds us that Athenian weirdness is as ageless as Athenian wisdom."

author of SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome Mary Beard

"This well-chosen collection of Seneca's writings on death demonstrates James Romm's gift for making the people and ideas of antiquity vivid for general readers. The introduction is graceful, the translations are accurate and readable, the annotations are nicely judged, and the epilogue featuring Tacitus's account of Seneca's suicide is indispensable."

Princeton University (on How to Die: An Ancien Robert A. Kaster

"This well-chosen collection of Seneca's writings on death demonstrates James Romm's gift for making the people and ideas of antiquity vivid for general readers. The introduction is graceful, the translations are accurate and readable, the annotations are nicely judged, and the epilogue featuring Tacitus's account of Seneca's suicide is indispensable."—Robert A. Kaster, Princeton University (review quote for previous work)

From the Publisher