PHILOLAUS AND THE CENTRAL FIRE

Carl Huffman (DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana)

I. Introduction

Philolaus’ decision to posit an unobserved and unobservable central re in the middle of the cosmos is one of the most puzzling moments in early Greek cosmology.1 The consequences of this decision were, eventually, epoch-making. Once the central re takes over the central position, the earth becomes a planet for the rst time in human thought. The innovation did not catch on immediately; most ancients continued to believe in a geocentric universe. Some two thousand years later, however, Copernicus, dissatised with the traditional geocentric cosmology which he had inherited, reports that he pored over the texts of his predecessors in order to nd alternatives and in (pseudo-) Plutarch (Diels 1958 378) encountered the system of Philolaus who “held that the earth moved in a circle . . . and was one of the planets” (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres I. 5, tr. Wallis). Copernicus was thus led by Philolaus, as he reports to Pope Leo, “to meditate on the mobility of the earth” (Preface to On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres).2 Copernicus focused on the mobility of the earth and ignored

1 Aristotle does not assign the central-re cosmology to Philolaus by name but rather to the Pythagoreans as a group. He clearly dates these Pythagoreans to the time of the atomists or [a little] before, i.e. 420 (the oruit of Democritus) or 450. Aristotle’s use of the expression “so-called Pythagoreans,” which shows both that this was the common name for these thinkers and that Aristotle had some reservations about it, along with this dating makes clear that he is not assigning the system to Pythagoras himself (ca. 570–ca. 490 BC). Aristotle appears to have found the systems of fth-century Pythago- reans such as Philolaus and Eurytus similar enough that he chose to refer to them as a group. His pupil, Theophrastus, however, in his collection of Tenets of Natural Philosophy, which forms the basis for the later doxographical tradition, assigned the central-re cosmology to Philolaus and to no one else (see Philolaus DK 44 A16). Fragments 7 and 17 of Philolaus’ book also refer to that cosmology. Thus, we can assign the central-re cosmology to Philolaus with some condence. 2 Copernicus also noted that Nicetas (Hicetas), Ecphantus and Heraclides of Pontus, while not making the earth a planet, had made it revolve on its axis at the center of the world (On the Revolutions of the Spheres I. 5). 58 carl huffman the fact that, in Philolaus’ system, it was not the sun but the central re around which the earth orbited. The evidence suggests, however, that Philolaus’ focus was more, or at least as much, on the central re as the now mobile earth; the central re is after all in the center and it was with the central re that Philolaus began his cosmogony (DK 44 B7). In this essay, then, I will restore Philolaus’ emphasis and reexamine the signicance of the central re in his cosmogony and cosmology. This reexamination is inspired by Peter Kingsley’s provocative analysis of Philolaus’ central re in Chapters 13 and 14 of his book, Ancient Philosophy, Mystery and Magic. Kingsley argues that, although Philolaus was also inuenced by “a planetary awareness inherited from Babylonia,” . . . “the single most important factor in the genesis of the scheme as a whole” was Philolaus’ interpretation of a line from Homer’s Iliad (VIII. 16), which describes the location of Tartarus: “as far under Hades as heaven is from earth” (1995 191). In Kingsley’s view, the central re is Tartarus, where Zeus imprisoned the Titans, and this in turn explains the names which the Pythagoreans, according to Aristotle, gave to the central re, i.e., in Kingsley’s translation, “prison of Zeus” ( ) and “defense-tower of Zeus” ( ). According to Kingsley, Philolaus inherited a view common in Greek Italy and Sicily, in which there were great res under the earth, a view inspired by the volcanic activity in the region (e.g. Mt. Etna and the Phlegraean elds). Homer’s verse leads Philolaus to associate these res with Tartarus below the earth, and the planetary awareness inherited from Babylonia, along with the great distance of Tartarus below the earth in the verse, led Philolaus to project the ery Tartarus outside the earth and place it at the center of his cosmos. Hades, which the Homeric verse places between the earth and Tartarus, is also projected outside the earth and becomes that second puzzling feature of Philolaus’ system, the counter-earth, which like the central re and Hades itself, according to the traditional etymology ( -Plato, Gorgias 493b), is invisible to those on earth (185–187). It has been recognized since Aristotle that the introduction of the central re and the counter-earth and the concomitant moving earth had nothing to do with trying to save the phenomena but was based on a priori considerations of some sort. Kingsley rejects Aristotle’s account of those considerations and proposes the startling conclusion that the Philolaic cosmology was a product of Philolaus’ meditation on and interpretation of what were for him “inspired texts” (1995 189), the poems of Homer.