Fragrance Quote
Theophrastus wrote that “odours in general, like tastes, are due to mixture,” in one of the oldest surviving works on scent.
In His Own Words
“Odours in general, like tastes, are due to mixture: for anything which is uncompounded has no smell, just as it has no taste: wherefore simple substances have no smell, such as water air and fire: on the other hand earth is the only elementary substance which has a smell, or at least it has one to a greater extent than the others, because it is of a more composite character than they.”
— Theophrastus, Concerning Odours (c. 300 BC), section 1, translated by Sir Arthur Hort (Loeb Classical Library, 1916)
Essential Details
Theophrastus on Odours and Mixture at a Glance
- Speaker: Theophrastus (c. 371–c. 287 BC)
- Source: Concerning Odours (De Odoribus), Hort translation, 1916
- Status: Public domain
- Theme: The earliest ideas about how scent works
Why the Quote Resonates
Theophrastus, a pupil of Aristotle, tried to explain smell with the physics of his day: scent comes from mixture, and earth, the most composite element, carries it. The reasoning is dated, but the observation that scent depends on blending still describes how perfumes are built.
The Beginning of a Written Tradition
Concerning Odours goes on to discuss perfumes and the materials used to make them. It sits near the start of the written history told in The History of Perfume. Compare its practical interest in blending with Piesse’s octave of odours, written some two thousand years later.
Why it matters
The oldest surviving writing on scent already treated blending as the heart of the craft.
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