“You (King Gelon) are aware the 'universe' is the name given by most astronomers to the sphere the center of which is the center of the earth, while its radius is equal to the straight line between the center of the sun and the center of the earth. This is the common account as you have heard from astronomers. But Aristarchus has brought out a book consisting of certain hypotheses, wherein it appears, as a consequence of the assumptions made, that the universe is many times greater than the 'universe' just mentioned. His hypotheses are that the fixed stars and the sun remain unmoved, that the earth revolves about the sun on the circumference of a circle, the sun lying in the middle of the floor, and that the sphere of the fixed stars, situated about the same center as the sun, is so great that the circle in which he supposes the earth to revolve bears such a proportion to the distance of the fixed stars as the center of the sphere bears to its surface.”

— Archimedes (c.230BC), The Sand Reckoner (Ѻ)

“At the school of Alexandria, Aristarchus, of Samos, flourished between 280 and 264BC. This astronomer adopted the views of Pythagoras in regard to the earth’s motion around the sun; and he held that since the stars appeared to keep the same fixed position in space, when viewed from the opposite points of the earth’s orbit around the sun, their distances must be vastly greater than that of the sun.”

— Henry Bray (1910), The Living Universe [3]