Xenophanes of Colophon

Arguing against Pythagoras was Xenophanes (zenAHfenes), born around 570 BCE and a native of Colophon, a Greek city in western Asia Minor. He is described in early life as having fled rather than live under Persian rule and as having been disgusted with the Greeks for their feeble resistance against the Persians. His disgust is described as having spread to a rejection of the Greek gods -- the gods of Homer and Hesiod. He favored what he thought was reason rather than being guided in outlook by emotions or mere tradition.

He took up residence in Sicily, where he supported himself as a poet in the the court of Hieron. Knowledge of his views derives from fragments of his poetry and surviving quotations.

From Sicily, he moved to Greek territory in the south of the Italian Peninsula, and there became a became a celebrated philosopher.

He objected to mysticism and to divine revelations. He denounced Pythagoras. He denounced the priests of the Dionysus movement as impostors. The gods of Homer, he said, teach theft, adultery and mutual deceit. He ridiculed seeing gods as human-like, writing:

fragment: "But mortals deem that the gods are begotten as they are, and have clothes like theirs, and voice and form."

fragment: "Yes, and if oxen and horses or lions had hands, and could paint with their hands, and produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the forms of the gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and make their bodies in the image of their several kinds."

fragment: "The Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed; the Thracians say theirs have blue eyes and red hair."

Xenophanes constructed a philosophy of his own, knowing that he was going beyond humanity's ability to know. He speculated that the earth stretched infinitely in all directions, that the earth was infinitely deep and that air extended infinitely upwards. He imagined a god as a central force in the universe but not human-like in shape, thought or emotions: a god that is everywhere and everything, a god that is the whole universe, perhaps the primary source that Thales and Anaximander spoke about. And, like pantheists of later times, his belief that god is nature and nature is god left him open to the charge that he believed in no god at all.

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