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The former butterfly
Butterfly

A butterfly is an insect of the Order Lepidoptera. Like all Lepidoptera, butterflies are notable for their unusual Biological life cycle with a larval caterpillar stage, an inactive pupal stage, and a spectacular metamorphosis into a familiar and colourful winged adult form....
 genus
Genus

A genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the classification of living and fossil organisms. The taxonomic ranks are domain , kingdom , phylum, class , order , family , genus, and species....
 of the same name is now included in Papilio
Papilio

File:Citrus Swallowtail Papilio demodocus.jpgPapilio is a genus in the swallowtail butterfly family , Papilionidae. It includes a number of well-known North American species such as the Western Tiger Swallowtail, Papilio rutulus....
.


Heraclides Ponticus (Greek
Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
: ) (387 BC-312 BC), also known as Herakleides, was a Greek
Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkans. It has borders with Albania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the north, and Turkey to the east....
 philosopher who lived and died at Heraclea Pontica
Heraclea Pontica

Heraclea Pontica , an ancient city on the coast of Bithynia in Asia Minor, at the mouth of the river Lycus . It was founded by the Greek city-state of Megara c.560-558 and was named after Heracles who the Greeks believed entered the underworld at a cave on the adjoining Archerusian promontory ....
, now Karadeniz Eregli
Karadeniz Eregli

Karadeniz Eregli is a city and district in Zonguldak Province of Turkey, on the Black Sea shore at the mouth of the Kili?su River....
, Turkey
Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in southwest Asia and Thrace in the Balkans region of Southern Europe....
.

He is frequently hailed as the originator of the heliocentric theory, although this is doubted.

Heraclides' father was Euthyphron, a wealthy nobleman who sent him to study at the Platonic Academy
Platonic Academy

For the Raphael painting, see The School of AthensThe Academy was founded by Plato in ca. 387 BC in Classical Athens. It persisted throughout the Hellenistic period as a philosophical skepticism school, until coming to an end after the death of Philo of Larissa in 83 BC....
 in Athens
Athens

Athens , the Capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the List of cities by time of continuous habitation, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
 under its founder Plato
Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greece Greeks philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Platonic Academy in Ancient Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the western world....
 and under his successor Speusippus
Speusippus

Speusippus was an ancient Greece philosopher. Speusippus was Plato's nephew by his sister Potone. After Plato's death, Speusippus inherited the Platonic Academy and remained its head for the next eight years....
, though he also studied with Aristotle
Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greeks philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, Poetics , theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology....
.






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The former butterfly
Butterfly

A butterfly is an insect of the Order Lepidoptera. Like all Lepidoptera, butterflies are notable for their unusual Biological life cycle with a larval caterpillar stage, an inactive pupal stage, and a spectacular metamorphosis into a familiar and colourful winged adult form....
 genus
Genus

A genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the classification of living and fossil organisms. The taxonomic ranks are domain , kingdom , phylum, class , order , family , genus, and species....
 of the same name is now included in Papilio
Papilio

File:Citrus Swallowtail Papilio demodocus.jpgPapilio is a genus in the swallowtail butterfly family , Papilionidae. It includes a number of well-known North American species such as the Western Tiger Swallowtail, Papilio rutulus....
.


Heraclides Ponticus (Greek
Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
: ) (387 BC-312 BC), also known as Herakleides, was a Greek
Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in southeastern Europe, situated on the southern end of the Balkans. It has borders with Albania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the north, and Turkey to the east....
 philosopher who lived and died at Heraclea Pontica
Heraclea Pontica

Heraclea Pontica , an ancient city on the coast of Bithynia in Asia Minor, at the mouth of the river Lycus . It was founded by the Greek city-state of Megara c.560-558 and was named after Heracles who the Greeks believed entered the underworld at a cave on the adjoining Archerusian promontory ....
, now Karadeniz Eregli
Karadeniz Eregli

Karadeniz Eregli is a city and district in Zonguldak Province of Turkey, on the Black Sea shore at the mouth of the Kili?su River....
, Turkey
Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in southwest Asia and Thrace in the Balkans region of Southern Europe....
.

He is frequently hailed as the originator of the heliocentric theory, although this is doubted.

Heraclides' father was Euthyphron, a wealthy nobleman who sent him to study at the Platonic Academy
Platonic Academy

For the Raphael painting, see The School of AthensThe Academy was founded by Plato in ca. 387 BC in Classical Athens. It persisted throughout the Hellenistic period as a philosophical skepticism school, until coming to an end after the death of Philo of Larissa in 83 BC....
 in Athens
Athens

Athens , the Capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the List of cities by time of continuous habitation, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
 under its founder Plato
Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greece Greeks philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Platonic Academy in Ancient Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the western world....
 and under his successor Speusippus
Speusippus

Speusippus was an ancient Greece philosopher. Speusippus was Plato's nephew by his sister Potone. After Plato's death, Speusippus inherited the Platonic Academy and remained its head for the next eight years....
, though he also studied with Aristotle
Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greeks philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, Poetics , theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology....
. According to the Suda
Suda

The Suda or Souda is a massive 10th century Byzantine Empire Medieval Greek historical encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world. It is an Encyclopedia lexicon with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often derived from medieval Christian compilers....
, Plato
Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greece Greeks philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Platonic Academy in Ancient Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the western world....
, on his departure for Sicily
Sicily

Sicily is an Autonomous regions with special statute of Italy. Of all the regions of Italy, Sicily covers the largest land area at 25,708 km? and currently has just over five million inhabitants....
 in 360 BC, left his pupils in the charge of Heraclides. Speusippus
Speusippus

Speusippus was an ancient Greece philosopher. Speusippus was Plato's nephew by his sister Potone. After Plato's death, Speusippus inherited the Platonic Academy and remained its head for the next eight years....
, before his death in 339 BC, had chosen Xenocrates
Xenocrates

Xenocrates of Chalcedon was a Ancient Greece philosopher, mathematician, and leader of the Platonic Academy from 339 to 314 BC. His teachings followed those of Plato's, which he attempted to define more closely, often with mathematical elements....
 as his successor was put to a vote, where Xenocrates
Xenocrates

Xenocrates of Chalcedon was a Ancient Greece philosopher, mathematician, and leader of the Platonic Academy from 339 to 314 BC. His teachings followed those of Plato's, which he attempted to define more closely, often with mathematical elements....
 narrowly triumphed over Heraclides and Menedemus of Pyrrha
Menedemus of Pyrrha

Menedemus of Pyrrha, Lesbos, Lesbos, lived c. 350 BC, was a member of Plato's Platonic Academy, during the time of Speusippus.Upon the death of Speusippus in 339 BC, an election was held for the next scholarch of the Academy....
 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
Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, structure, space, change, and related topics of pattern and form. Mathematicians seek out patterns whether found in numbers, space, natural science, computers, imaginary abstractions, or elsewhere....
, music
Music

Music is an art form whose media is sound organized in time. Common elements of music are pitch , rhythm , dynamics , and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture ....
, grammar
Grammar

Grammar is the field of linguistics that covers the conventions governing the use of any given natural language. It includes morphology and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, phonology, semantics, and pragmatics....
, physics
Physics

Physics is the natural science which examines basic concepts such as energy, force, and spacetime and all that derives from these, such as mass, charge, matter and its Motion ....
, history
HIStory

HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I is a double album by Michael Jackson, released on June 20, 1995, and is Jackson's ninth. The first disc, named "HIStory Begins" consists of a selection of Jackson's greatest hits from the singer's past fifteen years, while the second, named "HIStory Continues" features new songs, with the...
 and rhetoric
Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of using language as a means to persuade. Along with logic and dialectic, rhetoric is one of the three ancient arts of discourse....
, 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 Laėrtius
Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes La?rtius , the biographer of the Greece philosophers, is supposed by some to have received his surname from the town of Laerte in Cilicia, Asia Minor, and by others from the Roman Empire family of the La?rtii....
.

Like the Pythagoreans Hicetas
Hicetas

Hicetas was a Ancient Greeks philosopher of the Pythagoras. He was born in Syracuse, Italy. Like his fellow Pythagorean Ecphantus and the Academic Heraclides Ponticus, he believed that the daily movement of permanent stars was caused by the rotation of the Earth around its Axis of rotation....
 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
Venus

Venus is the second-closest planet to the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus , the Roman mythology goddess of love....
 and Mercury
Mercury (planet)

Mercury is the innermost and smallest planet in the Solar System, orbiting the Sun once every 88 days. The orbit of Mercury has the highest Orbital eccentricity of all the Solar System planets, and it has the smallest axial tilt....
 revolve around the Sun. This would mean that he anticipated the Tychonic system
Tychonic system

The Tychonic system was a model of the solar system published by Tycho Brahe in the late 16th century which combined what he saw as the mathematical benefits of the Copernican system with the philosophical and "physical" benefits of the Ptolemaic system....
, an essentially geocentric model
Geocentric model

In astronomy, the geocentric model or The Ptolemaic worldview of the universe is the Superseded scientific theories#Superseded astronomical and cosmological theories that the Earth is the center of the universe and other objects go around it....
 with heliocentric aspects.

The credibility of Heraclides' statements were strengthened after the discovery of long iron spits in 1894, during the excavation of the Heraion of Argos
Heraion of Argos

The Heraion of Argos was the temple in the main sanctuary in the Argolid dedicated to Hera, whose epithet "Argive Hera" is familiar to readers of Homer....
. Waldston
Charles Waldstein (archaeologist)

Charles Waldstein, later Sir Charles Walston Order of the British Empire , was an England-United States archaeology.Waldstein was born into a Jewish family in New York City on March 30, 1856....
 recognized that the long spits were mentioned by various literary sources as having been used as money. The fact that spit-money has been dedicated at the Heraion after its replacement by silver coins, is mentioned in a quotation from Herakleides of Pontos in "Orion, s.v. ojbolov".

Another quote of Heraclides, of particular significance to historians, is his statement that fourth century Rome
Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
 was a Greek city (fr. 106 Wehrli).

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