Theophrastus of Eresus, Commentary Volume 5: Sources on Biology (Human Physiology, Living Creatures, Botany: Texts 328-435)

R.W. Sharples, Ph.D. (1978) in Classics, University of Cambridge, is Reader in Greek and Latin at University College, London. He has published commentaries on works by Plato, Cicero, Alexander of Aphrodisias and Boethius, and numerous articles on ancient philosophy.

'...the standard reference on most aspects of the still largely unexplored history of Peripatetic zoology and medicine...This fresh assemblage of Theophrastus belongs in every library and personal collection that incorporates the best works in the history of science: Sharples and his colleagues are owed an enormous debt of gratitude.'John Scarborough, ISIS, 1996.'This is a work of fine, generous and widely ranging scholarship. It is rendered even more useful by the bountiful provision of indices.'James Longrigg, Medical History, 1996.'...scrupulous scholarship...concise histories of the scholarship on a given passage...His painstaking labour illuminates whole areas of Theophrastan philosophy that one might have thought were irreversibly lost in darkness. Beneficiaries of Sharples' work will be not just the growing band of students of Theophrastus, but readers of Plato, Aristotle, Galen, and later philosophers, and all those who will learn from the new histories of ancient and medieval philosophy and science that these texts and commentaries will allow and eventually necessitate.'William Wians, Ancient Philosophy, 1996.