The Greek mathematician and astronomer Aristarchus of Samos proposed such a system during the third century BCE (Dreyer 1953, pp. 135–48).In an early unpublished manuscript of De Revolutionibus (which still survives today in the Jagiellonian Library in Kraków), Copernicus wrote that "It is credible that ... Philolaus believed in the mobility of the Earth and some even say that Aristarchus was of that opinion", a passage that was removed from the published edition, a decision described by Owen Gingerich as "eminently sensible" "from an editorial viewpoint".[۴] Philolaus was not a heliocentrist as he thought that both the Earth and the Sun moved around a central fire. Gingerich says that there is no evidence that Copernicus was aware of the few clear references to Aristarchus's heliocentrism in ancient texts (as distinct from one other unclear and confusing one), especially Archimedes's The Sand-Reckoner (which was not in print until the year after Copernicus died), and that it would have been in his interest to mention them had he known of them, before concluding that he developed his idea and its justification independently of Aristarchus.[۴]
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André Goddu, Copernicus and the Aristotelian Tradition (2010), p. 436 (note 125), citing Goddu, review of Jerzy Gassowski, "Poszukiwanie grobu Mikołaja Kopernika" ("Search for Grave of Nicolaus Copernicus"), in Journal for the History of Astronomy, 38.2 (May 2007), p. 255.
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Owen Gingerich, "Did Copernicus Owe a Debt to Aristarchus?", Journal for the History of Astronomy, vol. 16, no. 1 (February 1985), pp. 37–42. "There is no question but that Aristarchus had the priority of the heliocentric idea. Yet there is no evidence that Copernicus owed him anything.(!9) As far as we can tell both the idea and its justification were found independently by Copernicus."