NOTES. CIX 



The letter of Lysis to Hipparchus (an old Pythagorean, who had disclosed 

 the mysteries of the sect), is, like so many other writings, a forgery of later 

 times. Copernicus had probably become acquainted with it from the collec- 

 tion of Aldus Manutius, Epistolse diversorum Philosophorum (Romse, 1494), 

 or from a Latin translation by Cardinal Bessarion (Venet. 1516). In the 

 prohibition of Copernicus' work, De Revolutionibus, in the famous decree of 

 the Congregazione dell' Indice of the 5th of March, 1616, the new system of 

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

 vine Scripturse omnino adversans." The important passage on Aristarchus 

 of Samos, of which I have spoken in the text, is in the Arenarius, p. 449 of 

 the Paris edition of Archimedes of 1615 by David Rivaltus. But 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 Astro- 

 nomers who imagined the earth to be immoveable in the centre of the uni- 

 verse ; that this centre was occupied by the sun, which was immoveable, like 

 other stars, while the earth revolved round it." Copernicus, in his work, 

 twice names Aristarchus, p. 69 b and 79, but without any allusion to his 

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

 schaft (Bd. ii. 1808, S. 452), asks whether Copernicus was acquainted with 

 Nicolaus von Cusa's work, De Docta Ignorantia. The first Paris edition of it 

 was indeed published in 1514, and the expression, "jam nobis manifestum 

 est terram in veritate moveri," from a platonising cardinal, might have been 

 expected to make 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) in the library of the Hospital 

 at Cues, sufficiently proves, as does the work De Venatione Sapientiw, 

 cap. 28, that Cusa imagined the earth not to move round the sun, but to 

 move together with it, though more slowly, "round the constantly changing 

 pole of the universe" (Clemens, in Giordano Bruno, and Nicol. vua Cusa, 

 1847, S. 97100). 



( 474 ) p. 309. See the profound treatment of this subject in Martin, Etudes 

 sur Timee, T. ii. p. Ill (Cosmographie des Egyptiens), and p. 129133 

 (Antecedents du Systeme de Copernic). The statement of this learned phi- 

 lologist, according to which the original system of Pythagoras himself 

 differed from that of Philolaos, and placed the earth at rest in the centre, 

 does not appear to me quite convincing (T. ii. p. 103 and 107). Respecting 

 the remarkable statement of Gassendi mentioned in the text, of the simi- 

 larity of the systems of Tycho Brahe and Apollonius of Perga, I here add 



