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Updated: May 1, 2025
We may take the opportunity, later, to inquire into the number of cases in which the machinery of solar systems appears to have broken down. The first case of a solar conflagration on record is that of the new star observed by Hipparchus some 2000 years ago. In his time, and indeed until quite recently, an object of this kind was called a new star, or a temporary star.
His gift was the gift of accurate observation rather than the gift of imagination. No scientific progress is possible without scientific guessing, but Hipparchus belonged to that class of observers with whom hypothesis is held rigidly subservient to fact. It was not to be expected that his mind would be attracted by the heliocentric theory of Aristarchus.
Even on Solon's first appearance in public life, when he inspires the Athenians to prosecute the war with Megara, he addresses the passions of the crowd, not by an oration, but a poem; and in a subsequent period, when prose composition had become familiar, it was still in verse that Hipparchus communicated his moral apothegms.
It is highly probable that the astronomical knowledge of the Chaldæans in the days of Terah and Abraham was much more accurate than that possessed by the Greeks even after the time of Hipparchus.
To their dismay, they perceived him conversing familiarly with one of their own partisans, and immediately suspected that to be the treason of their friend which in reality was the frankness of the affable prince. Struck with fear, they renounced their attempt upon Hippias, suddenly retreated to the city, and, meeting with Hipparchus, rushed upon him, wounded, and slew him.
I mean, of course, the famous Ptolemy, whose name so long bore the honour of that system which really belonged to Hipparchus. This single fact speaks volumes for the real weakness of the great artificial school of literature and science founded by the kings of Egypt.
But we find ourselves in one and the same ecstasy with Eudoxus, Archimedes, and Hipparchus; and we readily give assent to Plato when he saith of the mathematics, that while ignorance and unskilledness make men despise them, they still thrive notwithstanding by reason of their charmingness, in despite of contempt.
The discovery that this would account for the appearances, was the discovery that in certain geometrical diagrams the relations were such, that the uniform motion of a point would, when looked at from a particular position, present analogous irregularities; and the calculations of Hipparchus involved the belief that the relations subsisting among these geometrical curves were equal to the relations subsisting among the celestial orbits.
By-the-way, will it be believed that Mitford, in is anxiety to prove Hippias and Hipparchus the most admirable persons possible, not only veils the unnatural passions of the last, but is utterly silent about the murder of Cimon, which is ascribed to the sons of Pisistratus by Herodotus, in the strongest and gravest terms. Mr. Suidas. Laertius iv., 13, etc.
That the theory of Hipparchus was absolutely consistent with all the facts of this particular observation is the best evidence that could be given of the difficulties that stood in the way of a true explanation of the mechanism of the heavens.
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