What?
An ancient Greek scientist, Aristarchus of Samos (3rd century B.C.), is known to have proposed the heliocentric theory ("the fixed stars and sun remained unmoved...the earth revolves around the sun on the circumference of a circle, the sun lying in the middle of the orbit"), and also assumed that the earth rotates on its own axis.
Ironically, Aristarchus' only surviving work is based on the geocentric theory.
Copernicus was aware of Aristarchus.
Don’t look at me, I love you both. :’) “A Study in Scarlet —
His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it...
“What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently; “you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”