Aristarchus' heliocentrism accepted not rejected?

[timoneill]

Has anyone else noticed this section in the Wiki article on Aristarchus of Samos?:

"It is a common idea that the heliocentric view was rejected by the contemporaries of Aristarchus. This is due to Gilles Ménage's translation of a passage from Plutarch's On the Apparent Face in the Orb of the Moon. Plutarch reported that Cleanthes (a contemporary of Aristarchus and head of the Stoics) as a worshipper of the Sun and opponent to the heliocentric model, was jokingly told by Aristarchus that he should be charged with impiety. Gilles Ménage, shortly after the trials of Galileo and Giordano Bruno, amended an accusative (identifying the object of the verb) with a nominative (the subject of the sentence), and vice versa, so that the impiety accusation fell over the heliocentric sustainer. The resulting misconception of an isolated and persecuted Aristarchus is still transmitted today.[4][5]

Some facts suggest that Aristarchus' heliocentric model was an accepted theory for some centuries. It is known that a demonstration of the model was given by Seleucus of Seleucia, a Hellenistic astronomer who lived a century after Aristarchus,[6] but no full record has been found. Pliny the Elder[7] and Seneca[8] referred to planets' retrograde motion as an apparent (and not real) phenomenon, which is an implication of heliocentrism rather than geocentrism."

The reference for the idea that it is a misconception is Lucio Russo, the guy who claims there was a "forgotten scientific revolution" in ancient Greece, so I'm sceptical. The claims in the second paragraph are weak. Plutarch does not say Seleucus "demonstrated" any heliocentric model, just that he believed very firmly in the idea. And there is nothing remarkable about Pliny and Seneca noting that retrograde motion is apparent rather than real, since most scholars understood the Ptolemaic model to be a calculating device. But I'm still curious about the claim that the Plutarch passage about Cleanthes not referring to the heliocentric thesis.

[ignorantianescia]

Never before had I seen it, but it was added by an IP contributor whose only two edits ever were about inserting these two paragraphs.

This is how Cleanthes is normally read. I'd need to see the Greek to be able to actually judge the text-critical part of the argument, but from the translation I can't see for the life of it see why shifting accusative and nominative would render a sensible reading - the depreciated view appears to be heliocentric.

Lucio Russo is without question a fringe source and isn't sufficient sourcing for 'refuting' a common view. Do you think it's time to purge those segments?

[James Hannam]

As it happens, I'm 90% of the way through Russo's book. It's better than I expected, but his interpretations are highly tendentious. For instance, he says Lucretius claimed heavy and light bodies drop at the same rate under gravity, whereas he really said heavy and light atoms move at the same rate in a vacuum. However, as a compendium of obscure sources on ancient science, it is rather fun.

Anyway, here's the Greek from the Loeb of the key Plutarch passage:

καὶ ὁ Λεύκιος γελάσας “μόνον” εἶπεν“ὦ τάν, μὴ κρίσιν ἡμῖν ἀσεβείας ἐπαγγείλῃς, ὥσπερ Ἀρίσταρχον ᾤετο δεῖν Κλεάνθης (fn) τὸν Σάμιον ἀσεβείας προσκαλεῖσθαι τοὺς Ἕλληνας ὡς κινοῦντα τοῦ κόσμου τὴν ἑστίαν ὅτι <τὰ> φαινόμενα σῴζειν ἁνὴρ ἐπειρᾶτο μένειν τὸν οὐρανὸν ὑποτιθέμενος ἐξελίττεσθαι δὲ κατὰ λοξοῦ κύκλου τὴν γῆν ἅμα καὶ περὶ τὸν αὑτῆς ἄξονα δινουμένην.

And the translation:

"Thereupon Lucius laughed and said: “Oh, sir, just don’t bring suit against us for impiety as Cleanthes thought that the Greeks ought to lay an action for impiety against Aristarchus the Samian on the ground that he was disturbing the hearth of the universe because he sought to save <the> phenomena by assuming that the heaven is at rest while the earth is revolving along the ecliptic and at the same time is rotating about its own axis."

And here's the footnote on Menage's reading:

Ménage; ἀρίσταρχος . . . κλεάνθη

Now, unless I am quite wrong, M had Aristarchus in the nominative, and the current text has him in the accusative. Doesn't that mean M had Aristarchus doing the accusing rather than being accused (so the opposite of what the wiki editor implies)?

J

[ignorantianescia]

Dec 13, 2015 10:05:42 GMT James Hannam said:

Now, unless I am quite wrong, M had Aristarchus in the nominative, and the current text has him in the accusative. Doesn't that mean M had Aristarchus doing the accusing rather than being accused (so the opposite of what the wiki editor implies)?

You're entirely correct on both counts: the main text has Aristarchus as in the accusative and Cleanthes in the nominative and Ménage reverts that. Even if Ménage's emendation would have been correct, it remains unexplained why Cleanthes would be "the Samian"/of Samos, why a Stoic would express support for heliocentrism and why the heliocentrist Aristarchus would say Cleanthes deserves to be accused for supporting heliocentrism.

So I'm not sure why Ménage suggested that 'emendation', but maybe he thought that the hyperbaton of the accusative noun phrase was grammatically incorrect.

[davidwilson]

Dec 13, 2015 10:05:42 GMT James Hannam said:

As it happens, I'm 90% of the way through Russo's book. It's better than I expected, but his interpretations are highly tendentious. For instance, he says Lucretius claimed heavy and light bodies drop at the same rate under gravity, whereas he really said heavy and light atoms move at the same rate in a vacuum. However, as a compendium of obscure sources on ancient science, it is rather fun.

Anyway, here's the Greek from the Loeb of the key Plutarch passage:

καὶ ὁ Λεύκιος γελάσας “μόνον” εἶπεν“ὦ τάν, μὴ κρίσιν ἡμῖν ἀσεβείας ἐπαγγείλῃς, ὥσπερ Ἀρίσταρχον ᾤετο δεῖν Κλεάνθης (fn) τὸν Σάμιον ἀσεβείας προσκαλεῖσθαι τοὺς Ἕλληνας ὡς κινοῦντα τοῦ κόσμου τὴν ἑστίαν ὅτι <τὰ> φαινόμενα σῴζειν ἁνὴρ ἐπειρᾶτο μένειν τὸν οὐρανὸν ὑποτιθέμενος ἐξελίττεσθαι δὲ κατὰ λοξοῦ κύκλου τὴν γῆν ἅμα καὶ περὶ τὸν αὑτῆς ἄξονα δινουμένην.

And the translation:

"Thereupon Lucius laughed and said: “Oh, sir, just don’t bring suit against us for impiety as Cleanthes thought that the Greeks ought to lay an action for impiety against Aristarchus the Samian on the ground that he was disturbing the hearth of the universe because he sought to save <the> phenomena by assuming that the heaven is at rest while the earth is revolving along the ecliptic and at the same time is rotating about its own axis."

And here's the footnote on Menage's reading:

Ménage; ἀρίσταρχος . . . κλεάνθη

Now, unless I am quite wrong, M had Aristarchus in the nominative, and the current text has him in the accusative. Doesn't that mean M had Aristarchus doing the accusing rather than being accused (so the opposite of what the wiki editor implies)?

J

I believe you have indeed misread the footnote. In full, it says:

"Ménage; ἀρίσταρχος . . . κλεάνθη –E, B."

The letters "E" and "B" here refer to the primary sources described briefly on pp.26–7, which are manuscripts from the 14th and 15th centuries, respectively. The meaning of this and many other similar footnotes seems to be that the citation preceding the semicolon is the authority or manuscript whose reading the translator, Harold Cherniss, has preferred in his edition of the Greek text, while those following the semicolon are alternative readings occurring in one or both manuscripts, or suggested by other authorites. Thus, I believe this footnote means that Cherniss has adopted Ménage's readings of "ἀρίσταρχον" and "κλεάνθης" rather than the "ἀρίσταρχος" and "κλεάνθη" which apparently occur in the manuscripts. I don't know Greek, but since Cherniss's English translation makes "Aristarchus" the object of the verb phrase "lay an action for impiety against", and "Cleanthes" the subject of the verb "thought", I presume that Ménage's "ἀρίσταρχον" is the accusative and his "κλεάνθης" is the nominative.

Russo's apparent contention that all modern readings derive from Ménage's seems pretty dubious to me. A.O. Prickard, in the introduction to his translation of On the Face which appears on the Orb of the Moon, states that Kepler's annotated Latin translation—available online here—, which must have predated any translation Ménage could have published, had been "of the utmost service" to him. It is evident from Kepler's translation that he has adopted the same reading that Cherniss does, and if there is any dependence between Kepler's and Ménage's translations, it would have to have been the latter that was dependent on the former.

Dec 13, 2015 15:17:36 GMT ignorantianescia said:

Dec 13, 2015 10:05:42 GMT James Hannam said:

Now, unless I am quite wrong, M had Aristarchus in the nominative, and the current text has him in the accusative. Doesn't that mean M had Aristarchus doing the accusing rather than being accused (so the opposite of what the wiki editor implies)?

You're entirely correct on both counts: the main text has Aristarchus as in the accusative and Cleanthes in the nominative and Ménage reverts that. Even if Ménage's emendation would have been correct, it remains unexplained why Cleanthes would be "the Samian"/of Samos, why a Stoic would express support for heliocentrism and why the heliocentrist Aristarchus would say Cleanthes deserves to be accused for supporting heliocentrism.

So I'm not sure why Ménage suggested that 'emendation', but maybe he thought that the hyperbaton of the accusative noun phrase was grammatically incorrect.

Since you have misunderstood Cherniss's footnote, you have also misconstrued Russo's proposed interpretation, whose details are given in an article, Sulla presunta accusa di empietà ad Aristarco di Samo, coauthored with Silvio Medaglia and published (in Italian) in Quaderni urbinati di cultura classica. Copies are available from JSTOR.

One of Russo's points is that the thing whose "disturbance" the text gives as the reason for the charge of impiety is not literally the Earth (Greek: γη) but the hearth of the universe (Greek: κόσμου τὴν ἑστίαν). Although he acknowledges that this expression is sometimes used to refer to the Earth, he argues that it makes more sense within the stoic Cleanthes's religious philosophy to regard it as referring to the Sun. Thus, Russo's thesis is that Aristarchus rhetorically suggested that Cleanthes ought to have been charged with impiety for displacing the Sun from the centre of the universe where Aristarchus himself held it to be.

The big problem I have with Russo's proposed interpretation at the moment is that it appears to be inconsistent with the continuation of the text as Cherniss translates it: "because he sought to save <the> phenomena by assuming that the heaven is at rest while the earth is revolving along the ecliptic and at the same time is rotating about its own axis." Although Russo includes this in his quotation of Cherniss's translation he doesn't even acknowledge that it seems to be inconsistent with his proposed interpretation, let alone provide an explanation of how they can be reconciled. However, I haven't yet read the second half of tbe article (which was written by Medaglia), so perhaps an explanation is given there.

[ignorantianescia]

Nov 7, 2016 12:44:18 GMT davidwilson said:

I believe you have indeed misread the footnote. In full, it says:

"Ménage; ἀρίσταρχος . . . κλεάνθη –E, B."

The letters "E" and "B" here refer to the primary sources described briefly on pp.26–7, which are manuscripts from the 14th and 15th centuries, respectively. The meaning of this and many other similar footnotes seems to be that the citation preceding the semicolon is the authority or manuscript whose reading the translator, Harold Cherniss, has preferred in his edition of the Greek text, while those following the semicolon are alternative readings occurring in one or both manuscripts, or suggested by other authorites. Thus, I believe this footnote means that Cherniss has adopted Ménage's readings of "ἀρίσταρχον" and "κλεάνθης" rather than the "ἀρίσταρχος" and "κλεάνθη" which apparently occur in the manuscripts.

Thanks for clarifying that.

Nov 7, 2016 12:44:18 GMT davidwilson said:

I presume that Ménage's "ἀρίσταρχον" is the accusative and his "κλεάνθης" is the nominative.

That is correct.

Nov 7, 2016 12:44:18 GMT davidwilson said:

Dec 13, 2015 15:17:36 GMT ignorantianescia said:

You're entirely correct on both counts: the main text has Aristarchus as in the accusative and Cleanthes in the nominative and Ménage reverts that. Even if Ménage's emendation would have been correct, it remains unexplained why Cleanthes would be "the Samian"/of Samos, why a Stoic would express support for heliocentrism and why the heliocentrist Aristarchus would say Cleanthes deserves to be accused for supporting heliocentrism.

So I'm not sure why Ménage suggested that 'emendation', but maybe he thought that the hyperbaton of the accusative noun phrase was grammatically incorrect.

Since you have misunderstood Cherniss's footnote, you have also misconstrued Russo's proposed interpretation, whose details are given in an article, Sulla presunta accusa di empietà ad Aristarco di Samo, coauthored with Silvio Medaglia and published (in Italian) in Quaderni urbinati di cultura classica. Copies are available from JSTOR.

Note that I only commented on what I then understood to be Ménage's emendation - I haven't commented on Russo's reading anywhere (so it would be quite hard to misconstrue him). If the only attested form is indeed Cleanthes in the accusative and Aristarchus in the nominative, then I would fully support that emendation, support that only grows stronger with textual evidence.

Nov 7, 2016 12:44:18 GMT davidwilson said:

The big problem I have with Russo's proposed interpretation at the moment is that it appears to be inconsistent with the continuation of the text as Cherniss translates it: "because he sought to save <the> phenomena by assuming that the heaven is at rest while the earth is revolving along the ecliptic and at the same time is rotating about its own axis." Although Russo includes this in his quotation of Cherniss's translation he doesn't even acknowledge that it seems to be inconsistent with his proposed interpretation, let alone provide an explanation of how they can be reconciled. However, I haven't yet read the second half of tbe article (which was written by Medaglia), so perhaps an explanation is given there.

Yes, and then there's the fact that Cleanthes wasn't Samian whereas Aristarchus was, so the fact that tòn Sámion is in the accusative suggests that Aristarchus should be in the accusative.

[davidwilson]

Nov 7, 2016 12:44:18 GMT davidwilson said:

… However, I haven't yet read the second half of the article (which was written by Medaglia), so perhaps an explanation is given there.

Yes, Medaglia does give an explanation of sorts, although it requires just as many (but different) amendments to the texts of the original manuscripts as Cherniss's readings do, so it's not clear to me which—if either—of the two interpretations has the better claim to be favoured by Occam's razor.

Nov 7, 2016 18:47:31 GMT ignorantianescia said:

…

Nov 7, 2016 12:44:18 GMT davidwilson said:

Since you have misunderstood Cherniss's footnote, you have also misconstrued Russo's proposed interpretation, whose details are given in an article, Sulla presunta accusa di empietà ad Aristarco di Samo, coauthored with Silvio Medaglia and published (in Italian) in Quaderni urbinati di cultura classica. Copies are available from JSTOR.

Note that I only commented on what I then understood to be Ménage's emendation - I haven't commented on Russo's reading anywhere (so it would be quite hard to misconstrue him). …

My apologies then for the unwarranted inference.

Nov 7, 2016 18:47:31 GMT ignorantianescia said:

…
Yes, and then there's the fact that Cleanthes wasn't Samian whereas Aristarchus was, so the fact that tòn Sámion is in the accusative suggests that Aristarchus should be in the accusative.

Medaglia raises the same issue, which I had missed.

Medaglia's proposed reading of the Greek is:

… Ἀρίσταρχος ᾤετο δεῖν Κλεάνθη τ(οὺς) Σάμι(ους) ἀσεβείας προ<σ>καλεῖσθαι <εις> τοὺς Ἕλληνας ὡς κινοῦντα τοῦ κόσμου τὴν ἑστίαν ὅτι φαινόμενα σῴζειν ἁνὴρ (vel ἀνὴρ) …

where the angle brackets and parentheses indicate departures from the primary manuscripts—the terms in parentheses being amendments, and those in angle brackets being insertions. The difficult to spot difference between ἁνὴρ and ἀνὴρ is in the diacritic above the α. Cherniss indicates that the second of these is what appears in the manuscripts, whereas he (and presumably Medaglia) prefers Dübner's suggestion that it should be the first. Presumably the ellipses preceding and following the text mean that Medaglia accepts Cherniss's readings for the corresponding Greek. He gives the following translation:

"Lucio scoppiò a ridere e disse: 'Amico, evita soltanto di intimarci un accusa di empietà, nel modo in cui Aristarco credeva necessario che gli abitanti di Samo accusassero davanti ai Greci Cleante in quanto questo faceva muovere il focolare dell'universo [il sole]; il fatto è che quell'uomo [Aristarco] (oppure da uomo) si sforzava di salvaguardare mere apparenze: supponeva che il cielo fosse immobile e che la terra si muovesse lungo un'orbita obliqua, ruotando anche contemporaneamente intorno al suo asse."

English (my translation): "Lucius burst out laughing and said 'My friend, simply avoid imposing an accusation of impiety on us, in the way that Aristarchus believed necessary for the Samians to accuse Cleanthes in front of all the Greeks, inasmuch as the latter had the hearth of the universe [the Sun] moved; the fact is that that man [Aristarchus] (or as a man, he) made an effort to save mere appearances: he supposed that the heavens were motionless and that the Earth moved along an oblique orbit, and also simultaneously rotated on its axis.' "

[ignorantianescia]

Nov 7, 2016 21:31:23 GMT davidwilson said:

Nov 7, 2016 18:47:31 GMT ignorantianescia said:

…
Yes, and then there's the fact that Cleanthes wasn't Samian whereas Aristarchus was, so the fact that tòn Sámion is in the accusative suggests that Aristarchus should be in the accusative.

Medaglia raises the same issue, which I had missed.

Medaglia's proposed reading of the Greek is:

… Ἀρίσταρχος ᾤετο δεῖν Κλεάνθη τ(οὺς) Σάμι(ους) ἀσεβείας προ<σ>καλεῖσθαι <εις> τοὺς Ἕλληνας ὡς κινοῦντα τοῦ κόσμου τὴν ἑστίαν ὅτι φαινόμενα σῴζειν ἁνὴρ (vel ἀνὴρ) …

where the angle brackets and parentheses indicate departures from the primary manuscripts—the terms in parentheses being amendments, and those in angle brackets being insertions. The difficult to spot difference between ἁνὴρ and ἀνὴρ is in the diacritic above the α. Cherniss indicates that the second of these is what appears in the manuscripts, whereas he (and presumably Medaglia) prefers Dübner's suggestion that it should be the first. Presumably the ellipses preceding and following the text mean that Medaglia accepts Cherniss's readings for the corresponding Greek. He gives the following translation:

"Lucio scoppiò a ridere e disse: 'Amico, evita soltanto di intimarci un accusa di empietà, nel modo in cui Aristarco credeva necessario che gli abitanti di Samo accusassero davanti ai Greci Cleante in quanto questo faceva muovere il focolare dell'universo [il sole]; il fatto è che quell'uomo [Aristarco] (oppure da uomo) si sforzava di salvaguardare mere apparenze: supponeva che il cielo fosse immobile e che la terra si muovesse lungo un'orbita obliqua, ruotando anche contemporaneamente intorno al suo asse."

English (my translation): "Lucius burst out laughing and said 'My friend, simply avoid imposing an accusation of impiety on us, in the way that Aristarchus believed necessary for the Samians to accuse Cleanthes in front of all the Greeks, inasmuch as the latter had the hearth of the universe [the Sun] moved; the fact is that that man [Aristarchus] (or as a man, he) made an effort to save mere appearances: he supposed that the heavens were motionless and that the Earth moved along an oblique orbit, and also simultaneously rotated on its axis.' "

It's good of Medaglia to come up with an explanation, but I don't find the solution very probable. Though the loss of the first s in to(us) Samio(us) could be explained as a haplography, the loss of the second is more difficult to explain. Similarly the loss of eis could be influenced by proskaleisthai, but that is also rather farfetched. So I don't think the text-critical argument can really stand on its own merit.

[James Hannam]

David,

Thank you for your insights and steer on how to read the footnotes.

I remain highly sceptical of the overarching Russo thesis. He imagines that the Roman invasions caused the loss of Greek scientific knowledge, so Ptolemy and Hero were not using the best that would have been available. I suppose blaming the Romans makes a change from blaming Christians though.

J