sphere of the fixed stars, situated about the same centre as the sun, is so great that the circle in which he supposes the earth to revolve bears such a ratio to the distance of the fixed stars as the centre of the sphere bears to its surface.”

Here then is absolute and practically contemporary evidence that the Greeks, in the person of Aristarchus of Samos (about 310-230 B.C.), had anticipated Copernicus.

By the last words quoted Aristarchus only meant to say that the size of the earth is negligible in comparison with the immensity of the universe. This, however, does not suit Archimedes’s purpose, because he has to assume a definite size, however large, for the universe. Consequently he takes a liberty with Aristarchus. He says that the centre (a mathematical point) can have no ratio whatever to the surface of the sphere, and that we must therefore take Aristarchus to mean that the size of the earth is to that of the so-called “universe” as the size of the so-called “universe” is to that of the real universe in the new sense.

Next, he has to assume certain dimensions for the earth, the moon and the sun, and to estimate the angle subtended at the centre of the earth by the sun’s diameter; and in each case he has to exaggerate the probable figures so as to be on the safe side. While therefore (he says) some have tried to prove that the perimeter of the earth is 300,000 stadia (Eratosthenes, his contemporary, made it 252,000 stadia, say 24,662 miles, giving a diameter of about 7,850 miles), he will assume it to be ten times as great or 3,000,000 stadia. The diameter of the earth, he continues, is greater than that of the moon and that of the sun is greater than that of the earth. Of the diameter of the sun he observes that Eudoxus had declared it to be nine times that of the moon, and his own father, Phidias, had made it twelve times, while Aristarchus had