Abstract
Since 1979 an international team of scholars have been laboring to fill an important gap in our understanding of the Aristotelian tradition in the early Hellenistic period, and thereby of the fortunes of philosophy, science, and culture in the late ancient world. Under the name "Project Theophrastus" and the leadership of William Fortenbaugh, their aim has been first to bring together every surviving report of the writings and ideas of Aristotle's younger colleague and heir to his school, and then systematically to explore the lessons of these reports for our understanding of Theophrastus's thought, its relationship to Aristotle's and to that of Theophrastus's contemporaries and successors inside and outside the Aristotelian school, and its subsequent influence. After some thirteen years we have the first two of what will eventually be eleven volumes. These two comprise over eleven hundred pages of text and translation of every known report of or reference to Theophrastus's writings or teachings in which he is explicitly named, in Greek, Latin, or Arabic. They will be followed over the next seven years by an expected nine volumes of commentary, the first of which is to be published very early in 1995. As an indication of the range of topics covered in these two volumes one need only quote the titles of the two parts of the edition, each of which comprises one volume