24. The Pythagorean _Philolaus_, who lived about a century later than his master, introduced for the first time the idea of the motion of the earth: he appears to have regarded the earth, as well as the sun, moon, and five planets, as revolving round some central fire, the earth rotating on its own axis as it revolved, apparently in order to ensure that the central fire should always remain invisible to the inhabitants of the known parts of the earth. That the scheme was a purely fanciful one, and entirely different from the modern doctrine of the motion of the earth, with which later writers confused it, is sufficiently shewn by the invention as part of the scheme of a purely imaginary body, the counter-earth (ἀντιχθών), which brought the number of moving bodies up to ten, a sacred Pythagorean number. The suggestion of such an important idea as that of the motion of the earth, an idea so repugnant to uninstructed common sense, although presented in such a crude form, without any of the evidence required to win general assent, was, however, undoubtedly a valuable contribution to astronomical thought. It is well worth notice that Coppernicus in the great book which is the foundation of modern astronomy (chapter IV., § 75) especially quotes Philolaus and other Pythagoreans as authorities for his doctrine of the motion of the earth.
Three other Pythagoreans, belonging to the end of the 6th century and to the 5th century B.C., _Hicetas_ of Syracuse, _Heraclitus_, and _Ecphantus_, are explicitly mentioned by later writers as having believed in the rotation of the earth.
An obscure passage in one of Plato’s dialogues (the _Timaeus_) has been interpreted by many ancient and modern commentators as implying a belief in the rotation of the earth, and Plutarch also tells us, partly on the authority of Theophrastus, that Plato in old age adopted the belief that the centre of the universe was not occupied by the earth but by some better body.[12]
Almost the only scientific Greek astronomer who believed in the motion of the earth was _Aristarchus_ of Samos, who lived in the first half of the 3rd century B.C., and is best known by his measurements of the distances of the sun and moon (§ 32). He held that the sun and fixed stars were motionless, the sun being in the centre of the sphere on which the latter lay, and that the earth not only rotated on its axis, but also described an orbit round the sun. _Seleucus_ of Seleucia, who belonged to the middle of the 2nd century B.C., also held a similar opinion. Unfortunately we know nothing of the grounds of this belief in either case, and their views appear to have found little favour among their contemporaries or successors.