ABSTRACT
For more than a century a specter has hung over Heraclides, summoned through an eisegetic spell by Thos. Henri Martin, and promoted by Giovanni V. Schiaparelli,1 the astrono mer who a few years later spotted channels on Mars. That specter is heliocentrism, and I here attempt to banish the ghost. The argument is quadripartite. The first part will sketch the state of astronomical theory in the age of Heraclides, thereby showing how helio centrism would be a retrojection into that era fully as foreign as would attributing a spherical earth to Thales. Next, a description of the undoubted astro nomical contributions of Heraclides demonstrates that they form a coherent system, native to its era, with no place for heliocentrism. A third part of the
argument is provided by the papers of Bowen and Todd (chaps. 7 and 8) on the passages of Calcidius and Sim plicius out of which Martin, Schiaparelli, and followers spun their theories, showing that those passages attribute no heliocentrism to Heraclides. I augment that argument with a discussion of what is actually attributed to Heraclides by Calcidius. Finally, there is an extant anonymous partially helio centric theory, in Adrastus of Aphrodisias and others, which I date to the century around 90 bce and whose ascription I discuss.
