> Three Notes on Theophrastus’ Treatment of Tastes and Smells David N. Sedley The handling of tastes and smells in the preceding chapter by Sharples is thorough and authoritative. I want only to offer three supplementary notes. The first two concern Theophrastus’ commitment to Aristotelian orthodoxy. The other deals with the evidential status of Galen’s secondary reports of Theophrastus’ views. First, I am intrigued by Theophrastus’ claim that the number seven is “most canonical and natural” (De causis plantarum [CP] 6.4.2). As Sharples suggests,' Aristotle himself shows a marked predilection for finding a sevenfold division of colors and tastes in De sensu 4. Moreover, here, as often in the De sensu, this reads as an intentional elaboration of the De anima account, in which eight flavors were listed but in passing and with a hint that the list is only provisional (2.10 422b14: “these seem more or less to be the varieties of flavor”), On the other hand, Aristotle never states that the number seven is special. On the contrary, in Metaphysics 14.6 1093a13-19, where he derides the Pythagorean thesis that seven has special explanatory properties, he insists that the fact that there are seven vowels, Pleiades, Against Thebes, etc, is purely accidental. Syrianus in his commentary on the Metaphysics rightly points to De sense 4 as conflicting with the spirit of this criticism. Are we to say, then, that there are two distinct tendencies in Aristotle’s thought on canonical numbers, and that Theophrastus has developed rather more candidly than Aristotle might have wished the more Pythagorean of the two tendencies? Second, I want to focus on an apparent inconsistency, namely, that in De sensibus 20 Theophrastus scems on a first reading to deny that smell is an effluence, while in CP and De odoribus he tends to treat it as if it were.? Aristotle certainly denies the effluence theory (De sensu 5 443b1-2), and regards smell as transmitted by the action of its source on the medium (De anima 3.12). Yet the effluence theory of smell is, as it happens, the correct 205206 ‘Theophrastus of Eresus one. It would be pleasing, then, to think that Theophrastus was clear in his own mind on this issue and consciously departed from Aristotle in the cause of truth. Does he indeed deny the effluence theory of smell? I think not. De sensibus 20 reads as follows: What Empedocles says about effluences, although inadequate, is to some extent intelligible as regards the other senses, bur is hard to understand as regards touch and taste. For how are we to discriminate rough and smooth by effluence, or how do they fit into our passages? For fire seems to be the only clement to give off effluences, and none of the others. Again, if wasting away is due to effluence, which Empedocles uses as the most general evidence for his theory, and if it is also a fact that smells are produced by effluence, the smelliest things ought to be the quickest to be destroyed. Yet in fact almost the opposite is true: of plants and other things it is the smelliest that last longest. The crucial sentence (“Again, if . . .”) is a conditional with two protases, and with the counterfactual apodosis that the smelliest things ought to be quickest to be destroyed. The two protases are “if wasting away is due to effluence . . . and if it is also a fact that smells are produced by effluence.” Is Theophrastus asking us to reject the first protasis, the second, or both? It makes best overall sense to suppose that Theophrastus regards only the first as false and is assuming the truth of the second—that smells are produced by effluence. Empedocles claimed that there were effluences from everything, and supported this by the thesis that effluence is the universal cause of things’ gradually wasting away, Theophrastus himself, in this passage, is arguing against Empedocles’ general theory of effluence. What he opposes to it is not a blanket denial of effluence but a restriction of effluence to one element—fire alone of the elements produces effluences. But this is entirely consistent with the view that smells are effluences, because Theo- phrastus himself explicitly associates smell with heat.’ It therefore seems the most economical reading of this passage that Theophrastus is accepting, as he does in other works, that smells are effluences, and showing how this conflicts with the broader Empedoclean thesis that wasting away is due to effluence and hence that there are effluences of everything. In that way, consistency with Theophrastus’ other works is restored. He really does hold that smells arc effluences. And he is consciously correcting Aristotle.* I now move on to my third note, concerning the evidential status of Galen’s secondary reports. In his De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis et facultatibus Galen attributes to Aristotle and Theophrastus the view that pungent taste is the hottest (4.18), yet this matches nothing in the extant works of either’ (although the view already had the backing of Democritus and Plato, and may even have been uncontroversial). Perhaps it did occurThree Notes on Theophrastus’ Treatment of Tastes and Smells 207 in the lost works of one or both. But another possibility bothers me, at least in the case of Theophrastus. At CP 6.1.3 he does connect pungency with heat but not on his own behalf. Here he is expounding the difference between two kinds of explanation of taste. One may analyze a taste either in terms of the physical constitution of the object possessing it, as Democritus did, or in terms of the effect on the appropriate sense-organ, as if one were to explain the sweet taste as the one which separates the inherent moisture in the tongue, or asa lubricating or light or smooth taste; sour taste as the one which dries or mildly stiffens the tongue; pungent taste as the one which stiffens, or stings, or separates out the heat in the inherent moisture into the upper region, or simply as the taste which burns or heats, . . . If Galen has this passage in mind, he may be misleadingly attributing to ‘Theophrastus himself what Theophrastus has offered as a purely hypothetical definition of pungent in the course of illustrating a methodological issue. NOTES - See Sharples, chapter 8, section II, in this volume. . See Sharples, section IV. . Not that smell effluences will consist purely of fire, which in itself is odorless (De sensibus 22). Theophrastus will have to hold that fiery effluences carry the smell. 4. The coining of diosmon (see Sharples, section IV) may well have arisen in the course of commenting on Aristotle’s theory. There is no need to suppose that Theophrastus used it in his own theory of smell. . See Sharples, section IL eur woCopyright of Theophrastus of Eresus - Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities is the property of Transaction Publishers and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.