Theophrastos von Eresos Theophrastus holding a stone up for inspection

What Theophrastus says about stones bearing young

Theophrastus of Eresos (c. 371–c. 287 BC), a Greek naturalist from the island of Lesbos, gives an unusual report a place in his treatise on stones. Certain stones, it was said, could bear young. It would be tempting to retell the sentence as an example of the strange things an ancient scholar was prepared to believe. In the process one would lose the very words through which Theophrastus makes his own presence felt.

A qualification in the middle of a sentence

The greatest, however, and most wonderful of all the Qualities of Stones is that (if the Accounts of it are true) of those which bring forth young.

– Theophrastos von Eresos, Über die Steine, 1774, p. 27.[1]

The qualification comes exactly between two strong assertions. First the reader hears that the most wonderful property of all stones is about to be named. Only after the reliability of the accounts has been raised does the promised property actually appear. It is difficult to read the line aloud without pausing there. A reported observation thus finds a place in natural history while responsibility for its truth still rests with those who reported it.

Two voices on one printed page

In the London edition of 1774 the English translation takes up only a few lines at the top of the page. Below it John Hill gives considerably more space to the question of what Theophrastus himself believed. Hill introduces the so-called eagle stone. A stone containing a second piece would certainly offer a visible occasion for speaking of a mother and child. With the printed page before them, readers can follow the exchange in both directions. The identification of the eagle stone belongs to Hill’s commentary. The slight qualification on which the whole story turns was already there in Theophrastus.