"Of the two mathematicians Aristarchus of Samos and Seleucus of Babylon, whose systems came most nearly to his own, he Copernicus] mentions only the first, making no reference to the second. It has 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 dedication to Pope Paul III., quotes a long passage on Philolaüs, Ecphantus, and Heraclides of Pontus, from Plutarch's work on The Opinions of Philosophers (III., 13), and therefore that he might have read in the same work (II., 24) that Aristarchus of Samos regards the sun as one of the fixed stars."