A brilliant guess,[29] which seems fully justified by facts, has recently explained the personalities of these two mysterious Pythagoreans of unknown date, Hicetas and Ecphantus, whose names have been coupled for centuries with that of Heracleides, as teaching the rotation of Earth on her axis. It seems that they resemble the Shadow in Hans Andersen’s tale, which became a man and lived apart from the man to whom it originally owed its existence, for it is now thought that they were speakers introduced by Heracleides into one of his dramatic dialogues to discuss astronomy.
Heracleides, therefore, was the sole author of this remarkable discovery.
In this way Earth was restored to her central position, but as a rotating sphere, and the later Pythagoreans apparently tried to reconcile their new scheme with the old by calling Antichthon the uninhabited hemisphere of Earth, and placing the central fire within the earth.
IV.
GREEK ASTRONOMY.
Second Period. b.c. 400 to a.d. 150.
“Chiamavi il cielo, e intorno vi si gira, Mostrandovi le sue bellezze eterne.”