Scarcely Any Particulars Are Known Respecting Him:
Even the
exact period in which he flourished, is not accurately fixed; some placing
him 159 years, others 149, and others again bringing him down to 129 years
before Christ.
He was a native of Nice in Bithynia, but spent the greater
part of his life at the court of one of the Ptolemies. It is supposed that
he quitted his native place in consequence of some ill treatment which he
had received from his fellow citizens: at least we are informed by Aurelius
Victor, that the emperor Marcus Aurelius obliged the inhabitants of Nice to
send yearly to Rome a certain quantity of corn, for having beaten one of
their citizens, by name Hipparchus, a man of great learning and
extraordinary accomplishments. They continued to pay this tribute to the
time of Constantine, by whom it was remitted. As history does not inform us
of any other person of note of this name, a native of Nice in Bithynia, it
is highly probable that this was the Hipparchus, the astronomer and
geographer. That it was not unusual for conquerors and sovereigns to reward
or punish the descendants of those who had behaved well or ill to
celebrated men who had flourished long previously, must be well known to
those conversant with ancient history. The respect paid to the memory of
Pindar, by the Spartans, and by Alexander the Great, when they conquered
Thebes, is a striking instance of the truth of this observation.
Hipparchus possessed the true spirit of philosophy: having resolved to
devote himself to the study of astronomy, his first general
[principal->principle] was to take nothing for granted; but setting aside
all that had been taught by former astronomers, to begin anew, and examine
and judge for himself: he determined not to admit any results but such as
were grounded either in observations and experiments entirely new, made by
himself or on a new examination of former observations, conducted with the
utmost care and caution. In short, he may justly be regarded as one of the
first philosophers of antiquity who had a slight glimpse of the grand
maxim, which afterwards immortalized Bacon, and which has introduced modern
philosophers to a knowledge of the most secret and most sublime operations
of nature.
One of his first endeavours was, to verify the obliquity of the ecliptic,
as settled by Eratosthenes: he next fixed, as accurately as possible, the
latitude of Alexandria; but it would lead us far from the object of our
work, if we were even briefly to mention his discoveries in the science of
pure astronomy. We must confine ourselves to those parts of his discoveries
which benefitted geography, either directly or indirectly. After having, as
successfully as his means and the state of the science would permit him to
do, fixed the position of the stars, he transferred the method which he had
employed for this purpose to geography: he was the first who determined the
situation of places on the earth, by their latitudes and longitudes, with
any thing like accuracy. The latitude, indeed, of many places had been
fixed before; and the means of doing it were sufficiently simple and
obvious: but with respect to some general and safe mode of ascertaining the
longitudes, the ancient philosophers before Hipparchus, were ignorant of
it. He employed for this purpose the eclipses of the moon. After having
ascertained the latitudes and longitudes of a great many places, he
proposed to draw up a catalogue of terrestial latitudes and longitudes, but
this he was not able to accomplish: he had set the example, however and it
was followed by subsequent astronomers. He fixed on the Fortunate Islands,
which are supposed to be the Canaries, for his first meridian. His
principal works most probably were destroyed in the conflagration of the
Alexandrian library. His catalogue of the stars is preserved in the
Almagest of Ptolemy; and his commentary on Aratus and Eudoxus is still
extant.
Such is a brief sketch of the advantages which geography, as founded on
astronomy, derived from the labours of Hipparchus. We possess little
information respecting his ideas of the form of the earth, or the relative
position or extent of the different quarters and countries on the surface
of the globe. He seems to have been the first who conceived the idea of a
southern continent, uniting Africa and India: he had evidently some
information, though very vague and erroneous, of India, beyond the Ganges.
On the east coast of Africa, his knowledge did not extend beyond Cape
Guardaferi. On the whole, geography is more indebted to him for his
discoveries in astronomy, and, above all, for his setting the example of
carefully ascertaining facts, and not indulging, so much as his
predecessors had done, in conjectures and hypotheses, than for any actual
discoveries or advances he made in it. The eulogium which Pliny has
pronounced on him is very eloquent, and fully deserved. "Hipparchus can
scarcely receive too high praise: he has proved, more satisfactorily than
any other philosopher, that man is allied to heaven, and his soul derived
from on high. In his time, more than one new star was discovered, or rather
appeared for the first time; and this induced him to believe, that future
ages might witness stars for the first time moving from the immense regions
of space, within the limits of our observation. But the grandeur and
boldness of Hipparchus's mind rested not here: he attempted, and in some
measure succeeded in doing, what seems above human knowledge and power: he
numbered the stars, laid down rules by which their rising and setting might
be ascertained beforehand; and, finally, he constructed an apparatus on
which the position of each star was accurately given, and a miniature
picture of the heavens, with the motions of the celestial bodies, their
rising and setting, increase and diminution. He thus may be said to have
left the heavens as a legacy to that man, if any such were to be found, who
could rival him and follow his steps."
From the time of Hipparchus to that of Ptolemy the geographer, the
Alexandrian school, though rich in philosophers, who devoted their studies
and labour to other branches of physical and metaphysical science, did not
produce one, who improved geography, or the sciences on which it depends,
with the exception of Posidonius.
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