XV. Some writers have stated that Erasistratus, the physician, was a pupil of his; and it is very likely.
I. Theophrastus was succeeded in the presidency of his school by Strato of Lampsacus, the son of Arcesilaus, of whom he had made mention in his will.
II. He was a man of great eminence, surnamed the Natural Philosopher, from his surpassing all men in the diligence with which he applied himself to the investigation of matters of that nature.
III. He was also the preceptor of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and received from him, as it is said, eighty talents; and he began to preside over the school, as Apollodorus tells us in his Chronicles, in the hundred and twenty-third olympiad, and continued in that post for eighteen years.
IV. There are extant three books of his on Kingly Power; three on Justice; three on the Gods; three on Beginnings; and one on each of the subjects of Happiness, Philosophy, Manly Courage, the Vacuum, Heaven, Spirit, Human Nature, the Generation of Animals, Mixtures, Sleep, Dreams, Sight, Perception, Pleasure, Colours, Diseases, Judgments, Powers, Metallic Works, Hunger, and Dimness of Sight, Lightness and Heaviness, Enthusiasm, Pain, Nourishment and Growth, Animals whose Existence is Doubted, Fabulous Animals, Causes, a Solution of Doubts, a preface to Topics; there are, also, treatises on Contingencies, on the Definition, on the More and Less, on Injustice, on Former and Later, on the Prior Genus, on Property, on the Future. There are, also, two books called the Examination of Inventions; the Genuineness of the Commentaries attributed to him, is doubted. There is a volume of Epistles, which begins thus: “Strato wishes Arsinoe prosperity.”
V. They say that he became so thin and weak, that he died without its being perceived. And there is an epigram of ours upon him in the following terms:—
The man was thin, believe me, from the use Of frequent unguents; Strato was his name, A citizen of Lampsacus; he struggled long With fell disease, and died at last unnoticed.
VI. There were eight people of the name of Strato. The first was a pupil of Isocrates; the second was the man of whom we have been speaking; the third was a physician, a pupil of Erasistratus, or, as some assert, a foster-child of his; the fourth was an historian, who wrote a history of the Achievements of Philip and Perses in their wars against the Romans.… The sixth was an epigrammatic poet; the seventh was an ancient physician, as Aristotle tells us; the eighth was a Peripatetic philosopher, who lived in Alexandria.