THE UNIVERSE. DISCOVERIES IN THE CELESTIAL SPACES. 309 



itself, was tolerably well accquainted with the representations 

 which the ancients formed to themselves of the structure of 

 the Universe. In the period before Hipparehus, he however 

 only names Hicetas of Syracuse, (whom he always calls 

 Nicetas), Philolaus the Pythagorean, the Timseus of Plato, 

 Ecphantus, Heraclides of Pontus, and the great geometer 

 Apollonius of Perga. Of the two mathematicians who 

 came nearest to his system, Aristarchus of Samos, and 

 Seleucus the Babylonian, ( 4 ? 3 ) he only names the first 

 without farther notice, and does not mention the second at 

 all. It has often been said that Copernicus was not 

 accquainted with the opinion of Aristarchus of Samos, 

 relative to the central position of the Sun and the planetary 

 character of the Earth, because the " Arenarius," and all 

 the works of Archimedes, were only published a year after 

 his death, a full century after the invention of the art of 

 printing; but in saying this, it is forgotten that, in the 

 dedication to Pope Paul III., Copernicus quotes a long 

 passage on Philolaus, Ecphantus, and Heraclides of Pontus, 

 from Plutarch's work "on the opinions of Philosophers" 

 (iii. 13), and that he might have read in the same work 

 (ii. 24), that Aristarchus of Samos regarded the Sun as one 

 of the fixed stars, Among all the opinions of the Ancients, 

 the greatest influence on the direction and gradual develop- 

 ment of the views of Copernicus, would appear, from Gas- 

 sendi's statements, to have been exercised by a passage in the 

 encyclopaedic work of Martianus Mineus Capella of Madaura, 

 written in a semi-barbarous language, and by the System of 

 the World of Apollonius of Perga. According to the system 

 described by Martianus Mineus, which has been confidently 

 ascribed ( 474 ) sometimes to the Egyptians, and sometimes 



