Everything about Heraclides Ponticus totally explained
» "Heraclides" redirects here. The former butterfly genus of the same name is now included in Papilio.
Heraclides Ponticus (
Greek: Ἡρακλείδης ὁ Ποντικός) (
387 BC-
312 BC), also known as
Herakleides, was a
Greek philosopher who lived and died at
Heraclea Pontica, now
Karadeniz Ereğli,
Turkey.
Although frequently hailed as the originator of the
heliocentric theory, this is now generally doubted. Heraclides' father was Euthyphron, a wealthy nobleman who sent him to study at the
Platonic Academy in
Athens under its founder
Plato and under his successor
Speusippus, though he also studied with
Aristotle. According to the
Suda,
Plato, on his departure for
Sicily in
360 BC, left his pupils in the charge of Heraclides.
Speusippus, before his death in
339 BC, had chosen
Xenocrates as his successor was put to a vote, where
Xenocrates narrowly triumphed over Heraclides and
Menedemus of Pyrrha by five votes.
A punning on his name, dubbing him Heraclides "Pompicus," suggests he may have been a rather vain and pompous man and the target of much ridicule. However, Heraclides seems to have been a versatile and prolific writer on philosophy,
mathematics,
music,
grammar,
physics,
history and
rhetoric, notwithstanding doubts about attribution of many of the works. It appears that he composed various works in dialogue form. The main source of this biographical welter is the collection by
Diogenes Laërtius.
Like the
Pythagoreans Hicetas and
Ecphantus, Heraclides proposed that the apparent daily motion of the stars was created by the rotation of the Earth on its axis once a day. According to a late tradition, he also believed that
Venus and
Mercury revolve around the Sun. This would mean that he anticipated the
Tychonic system, an essentially
geocentric model with
heliocentric aspects.
Of particular significance to historians is his statement that fourth century
Rome was a Greek city (fr. 106 Wehrli).
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