He was a Greek native of Eresos in Lesbos, where he was born in 371 BCE. He was a peripatetic philosopher and a student of Aristotle. He studied at Athens under him and when Aristotle was forced into exile in 323 BCE, Theophrastus became the head of the Lyceum, the school of philosophy founded by Aristotle in Athens. Of his few surviving works, the most important are Peri phytōn historia (“Enquiry into Plants”) and Peri phytōn aitiōn (“On the Causes of Plants”).