Xenophanes of Colophon

Philospher and poet; b. c. 580 BC (Colophon, Ionia), d. c. 488 BC

Details about Xenophanes' life are sketchy, and only fragments of his works remain. Most of the evidence about him comes from the testimony of others, which indicate that Xenophanes was held in high regard.

Diogenes reports that Xenophanes wrote an epic of 2,000 verses to celebrate the founding of Elea in southern Italy. Others regard him as one of the founders of the Eleatic school of philosophy, which taught that the separate existence of material things was only appearance and that unity of all things was the main principle of the universe.

Xenophanes had to leave Greece when the Persians conquered Colophon about 546 BC. He lived in Sicily for a time but began to travel around the Mediterranean, reciting his epics to support himself and eventually making Elea his home.

The fragments of his epics known today show the conflict between the religions of the ancient civilizations and the new Greek religion. Xenophanes advocates the existence of one god and makes mockery of the idea that gods resemble humans:

• "God is one, supreme among gods and men, and not like mortals in body or in mind."
• "The whole [of god] sees, the whole perceives, the whole hears."
• "But without effort he sets in motion all things by mind and thought."
• "It [ie. being] always abides in the same place, not moved at all, nor is it fitting that it should move from one place to another."
• "But mortals suppose that the gods are born (as they themselves are), and that they wear man's clothing and have human voice and body."
• "But if cattle or lions had hands, so as to paint with their hands and produce works of art as men do, they would paint their gods and give them bodies in form like their own - horses like horses, cattle like cattle."
• "Homer and Hesiod attributed to the gods all things which are disreputable and worthy of blame when done by men; and they told of them many lawless deeds, stealing, adultery, and deception of each other."

The idea of one god who "sets in motion all things" did not find favour with his contemporaries. Xenophanes himself was influenced by the new scientific attitude; some of his fragments show him as a natural philosopher who tries to explain the nature of all things without invoking a god:

• "For all things come from earth, and all things end by becoming earth."
• "For we are all sprung from earth and water."
• "All things that come into being and grow are earth and water."
• "The sea is the source of water and the source of wind; for neither would blasts of wind arise in the clouds and blow out from within them, except for the great sea, nor would the streams of rivers nor the rain-water in the sky exist but for the sea; but the great sea is the begetter of clouds and winds and rivers."
• "This upper limit, of earth at our feet is visible and touches the air, but below it reaches to infinity. "

Aristotle, who shared some of Xenophanes' views, credits him with the foundation of the philosophical school in Elea. Plato referred to this also when he said that "The Eleatic school, beginning with Xenophanes and even earlier, starts from the principle of the unity of all things." Theophrastus said that Xenophanes' teaching rested on the premise that "The all is one and the one is God."

Reference

The translations of the fragments are taken from

Arthur Fairbanks, ed. and trans. (1898) Xenophanes, Fragments and Commentary, in: The First Philosophers of Greece, London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 65-85.
(quoted from http://history.hanover.edu/texts/presoc/xenophan.htm)

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