Theophrastus's Characters: An Ancient Take on Bad Behavior Audiobook

Read by Billy Crudup

"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

When Aristotle wrote that 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's 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's 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.

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“Actor Billy Crudup delivers these character sketches with perfectly pitched sardonicism and wit, making it possible for listeners to imagine Theophrastus’s lip curl or eye roll as he describes the Flatterer, the Pinchpenny, the Busybody, the Vulgar Man, the Social Climber, and many others. These characters—just as familiar in modern times as they would have been in Theophrastus’s world—may remind listeners of people they know and might also prompt self-reflection…This refreshing audio provides an excellent entry to Theophrastus’s work.”

— Library Journal (audio review)