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Heraclides Ponticus

Heraclides Ponticus

c. 390 BCE–c. 310 BCE · Athens

Heraclides Ponticus (c. 390-c. 310 BCE) was a Greek philosopher and astronomer of the Academy at Athens, originally from Heraclea on the Black Sea. He is remembered especially for proposing that the Earth rotates on its own axis, an important early astronomical idea, and he wrote widely on philosophy, literature, and natural science in dialogue form. His many works survive only in fragments.

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AthensAttica (Greece)

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About Athens

Athens, the capital of Greece since 1834, was the leading intellectual centre of the classical Greek world. Socrates taught there, and four major philosophical schools took root in the city: Plato's Academy, founded around 387 BCE, Aristotle's Lyceum, the Stoa of Zeno, and Epicurus' Garden. Under Hellenistic and Roman rule Athens remained a place of study that drew students from across the empire; in the 4th century CE the Christian writers Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus studied there together, while Neoplatonist teachers kept lecturing. Emperor Justinian's ban on pagan teaching of philosophy in 529 is generally taken to mark the end of the city's ancient history.

In Athens at the same time

Gorgias of Leontini, Democritus, Antisthenes, Aristophanes, Lysias, Andocides

Across the traditions, in Athens at the same time

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In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Heraclides Ponticus’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Heraclides Ponticus’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works(1)