Chapter 2. XENOPHANES1
(570-478 B.C.)
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Xenophanes, a native of Colophon, the son
of Dexius, or, according to Apollodorus, of Orthomenes, is praised
by Timon, whose words at all events are :
Xenophanes, not
over-proud, perverter of Homer, castigator.
He was banished
from his native city and lived at Zancle in Sicily [and having
joined the colony planted at Elea taught there]. He also lived in
Catana. According to some he was no man's pupil,
according to others he was a pupil of Boton of Athens,
2 or, as
some say, of Archelaus. Sotion makes him a contemporary of
Anaximander. His writings are in epic metre, as well as elegiacs and
iambics attacking Hesiod and Homer and denouncing what they said
about the gods. Furthermore he used to recite his own poems. It is
stated that he opposed the views of Thales and Pythagoras, and
attacked Epimenides also. He lived to a very great age, as his own
words somewhere testify
3 :
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19]
Seven
and sixty are now the years that have been tossing my cares up and
down the land of Greece ; and there were then twenty and five years
more from my birth up, if I know how to speak truly about these
things.
He holds that there are four elements of existent
things, and worlds unlimited in number but not overlapping [in
time]. Clouds are formed when the vapour from the sun is carried
upwards and lifts them into the surrounding air. The substance of
God is spherical, in no way resembling man. He is all eye and all
ear, but does not breathe ; he is the totality of mind and thought,
and is eternal. Xenophanes was the first to declare that everything
which comes into being is doomed to perish, and that the soul is
breath.
4
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20]
He
also said that the mass of things falls short of thought ; and again
that our encounters with tyrants should be as few, or else as
pleasant, as possible. When Empedocles remarked to him that it is
impossible to find a wise man, "Naturally," he replied, "for it
takes a wise man to recognize a wise man."
Sotion says that he was the first to maintain that all things are
incognizable, but Sotion is in error.
5
One of his poems is
The
Founding of Colophon, and another
The
Settlement of a Colony at Elea in Italy, making 2000 lines in
all. He flourished about the 60th Olympiad.
6 That he buried his sons with his own hands like
Anaxagoras
7 is stated by Demetrius of
Phalerum in his work
On Old Age and by
Panaetius the Stoic in his book
Of
Cheerfulness. He is believed to have been sold into slavery by
[... and to have been set free by] the Pythagoreans Parmeniscus and
Orestades : so Favorinus in the first book of his
Memorabilia. There was also another Xenophanes, of
Lesbos, an iambic poet.
Such were the "sporadic"
philosophers.