DISCOVERIES IN THE CELESTIAL SPACES. 311 



often been asserted that he was not acquainted with the views 

 of Aristarchus of Samos regarding the central sun and the 

 condition of the earth as a planet, because the Arenarius, and 

 all the other works of Archimedes, appeared only one year 

 after his death, and a whole century after the invention of the 

 art of printing ; but it is forgotten that Copernicus, in his ded- 

 ication to Pope Paul III., quotes a long passage on Philolaus, 

 Ecphantus, and Heraclides of Pontus, from Plutarch's work 

 on The Opi?iions of Philosophers (III., 13), and therefore 

 that he might have read in the same work (II., 24) that Ar- 

 istarchus of Samos regards the sun as one of the fixed stars. 



for instance, he was acquainted, as may be seen by the beginning of the 

 dedication, with the letter of Lysis to Hipparchus, which, indeed, shows 

 that the Italian school, in its love of mystery, intended only to commu- 

 nicate its opinions to friends, " as had also at first been the purpose of 

 Copernicus." The age in which Lysis lived is somewhat uncertain ; 

 he is sometimes spoken of as an immediate disciple of Pythagoras him- 

 self ; sometimes, and with more probability, as a teacher of Epaminon- 

 das (B6ckh, Philolaos, s. 8-15). The letter of Lysis to Hipparchus, an 

 old Pythagorean, who had disclosed the secrets of the sect, is, like 

 many similar writings, a forgery of later times. It had probably be- 

 come known to Copernicus from the collection of Aldus Mauutius, 

 Epistola diversorum Philosophorum (Romas, 1494), or from a Latin trans- 

 lation by Cardinal Bessarion (Venet., 1516). In the prohibition of Co- 

 pernicus's work, De Revolutionibus, in the famous decree of the Con- 

 gregazione delV Indice of the 5th of March, 1616, the* new system of 

 the universe is expressly designated as " falsa ilia doctrina Pythagorica, 

 Divinffl Scriptural omnino adversans." The important passage on Aris- 

 tarchus of Samos, of which I have spoken in the text, occurs in the 

 Arenarius, p. 449 of the Paris edition of Archimedes of 1615, by David 

 Rivaltas. The editio princeps is the Basle edition of 1544, apud Jo. 

 Hervagium. The passage in the Arenarius says, very distinctly, that 

 " Aristarchus had confuted the astronomers who supposed the earth to 

 be immovable in the center of the universe. The sun, which constitu- 

 ted this center, was immovable like the other stars, while the earth 

 revolved round the sun." In the work of Copernicus, Aristarchus is 

 twice named, p. 69, b., and 79, without any reference being made to 

 his system. Ideler, in Wolf and Buttmann's Museum der Alterthums- 

 wissenschaft (bd. ii., 1808, s. 452), asks whether Copernicus was ac 

 quainted with Nicolaus de Cusa's work, De Docta Ignorantia. The first 

 Paris edition was indeed publisheB in 1514, and the expression "jam 

 nobis manifestum est terram in veritate moveri," from a Platonizing car 

 dinal, might certainly have made some impression on the Canon of 

 Frauenburg (Whewell, Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. ii., p. 

 343) ; but a fragment of Cusa's writing, discovered very recently (1843) 

 by Clemens in the library of the Hospital at Cues, proves sufficiently, a9 

 does the work De Venatione Sapientiee, cap. 28, that Cusa imagined that 

 the earth did not move round the sun, but that they moved together, 

 though more slowly, " round the constantly changing pole of the uni- 

 verse." (Clemens, in Giordano Bruno, and Nicol. von Cusa, 1847, s. 

 97-100.) 



