Hicetas ( grc, Ἱκέτας or ; c. 400 – c. 335 BC) was a
Greek philosopher
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
of the
Pythagorean School
Pythagorean, meaning of or pertaining to the ancient Ionian mathematician, philosopher, and music theorist Pythagoras, may refer to:
Philosophy
* Pythagoreanism, the esoteric and metaphysical beliefs purported to have been held by Pythagoras
* Ne ...
. He was born in
Syracuse
Syracuse may refer to:
Places Italy
*Syracuse, Sicily, or spelled as ''Siracusa''
*Province of Syracuse
United States
*Syracuse, New York
**East Syracuse, New York
**North Syracuse, New York
*Syracuse, Indiana
* Syracuse, Kansas
*Syracuse, Miss ...
. Like his fellow Pythagorean
Ecphantus and the Academic
Heraclides Ponticus
Heraclides Ponticus ( grc-gre, Ἡρακλείδης ὁ Ποντικός ''Herakleides''; c. 390 BC – c. 310 BC) was a Greek philosopher and astronomer who was born in Heraclea Pontica, now Karadeniz Ereğli, Turkey, and migrated to Athens. He ...
, he believed that the daily movement of permanent stars was caused by the rotation of the
Earth around its
axis. When
Copernicus referred to ''Nicetus Syracusanus'' (Nicetus of Syracuse) in ''
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium'' as having been cited by
Cicero as an ancient who also argued that the Earth moved, it is believed that he was actually referring to Hicetas.
Cicero refers to Hicetas in the ''
Academica,'' volume II, citing in turn
Theophrastus. According to Heath:
:Cicero
ays“Hicetas of Syracuse, as Theophrastus says, holds that the heaven, the sun, the moon, the stars and in fact all things in the sky remain still, and nothing else in the universe moves, except the earth; but as the earth turns and twists about its axis with extreme swiftness, all the same results follow as if the earth were still and the heaven moved". This is of course not well expressed…but Cicero means no more than that the rotation of the earth is a complete substitute for the apparent daily rotation of the heaven as a whole.
Notes
4th-century BC Syracusans
4th-century BC philosophers
Ancient Greek astronomers
Pythagoreans of Magna Graecia
400s BC births
330s BC deaths
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