"[T]he principal reason why the heliocentric idea fell perfectly flat, was the rapid rise of practical astronomy, which had commenced from the time when the Alexandrian Museum became a centre of learning in the Hellenistic world. Aristarchus had no other phenomena to "save" except the stationary points and retrograde motions of the planets as well as their change of brilliancy; he may even have neglected the inequality of the sun's apparent motion originally discovered by Euktemon and recognized by Kalippus. But when similar and much more marked inequalities began to be perceived in the motions of the other planets, the hopelessness of trying to account for them by the beautifully simple idea of Aristarchus must have given the deathblow to his system, which thereby even among mathematicians lost its only claim to acceptance, that of being able to "save the phenomena." Most likely, as we have already said, these new inequalities had already more or less dimly commenced to make themselves felt in the days of Apollonius... and in that case we can understand why he did not feel disposed to simplify the system of movable excentrics by gathering the reins of all the unruly planetary steeds into one mighty hand, that of ."