after their own shapes and make them bodies like to their own.
(2) From earth all things are and to earth all things return. . . .
From earth and water come all of us. . . .
The sea is the well
whence water springeth. . . .
Here at our feet is the end of the
earth where it reacheth unto air, but, below, its foundations are
without end. . . .
The rainbow, which men call Iris, is a cloud
that is purple and red and yellow.
(3) No man hath certainly
known, nor shall certainly know, that which he saith about the
gods and about all things; for, be that which he saith ever so
perfect, yet doth he not know it; all things are matters of opinion. . . . That which I say is opinion like unto truth. . . . The gods
did not reveal all things to mortals in the beginning; long is the
search ere man findeth that which is better.”
There is very little secondary evidence to record. “The Eleatic school,” says the Stranger in Plato's Sophist, 242 D, “beginning with Xenophanes, and even earlier, starts from the principle of the unity of all things.” Aristotle, in a passage already cited, Metaphysics, A5, speaks of Xenophanes as the first of the Eleatic Unitarians, adding that his monotheism was reached through the contemplation of the οὐρανός. Theophrastus (in Simplicius's Ad Physica, 5) sums up Xenophanes's teaching in the propositions, “The All is One and the One is God.” Timon (in Sext. Empir. Pyrrh. i . 224), ignoring Xenophanes's theology, makes him resolve all things into one and the same unity. The demonstrations of the unity and the attributes of God, with which the treatise De Melissa, Xenophane et Gorgia (now no longer ascribed to Aristotle or Theophrastus) accredits Xenophanes, are plainly framed on the model of Eleatic proofs of the unity and the attributes of the Ent, and must therefore be set aside. The epitomators of a later time add nothing to the testimonies already enumerated.
Thus, whereas in his writings, so far as they are known to us, Xenophanes appears as a theologian protesting against an anthropomorphic polytheism, the ancients seem to have regarded him as a philosopher asserting the unity of Being. How are we to understand these conflicting, though not irreconcilable, testimonies? According to Zeller, the discrepancy is only apparent. The Greek gods being the powers of nature personified, pantheism lay nearer to hand than monotheism. Xenophanes was, then, a pantheist. Accordingly his assertion of the unity of God was at the same time a declaration of the unity of Being, and in virtue of this declaration he is entitled to rank as the founder of Eleaticism, inasmuch as the philosophy of Parmenides was his forerunner's pantheism divested of its theistic element. This reconciliation of the internal and the external evidence, countenanced as it is by Theophrastus, one of the best informed of the ancient historians, and approved by Zeller, one of the most learned of the modern critics, is more than plausible; but there is something to be said on the contrary part. In the first place, it may be doubted whether to a Greek of the 6th century pantheism was nearer than monotheism. Secondly, the external evidence does not bear examination. The Platonic testimony, if it proved anything, would prove too much, namely, that the doctrine of the unity of Being originated, not with Xenophanes, but before him; and, in fact, the passage from the Sophist no more proves that Plato attributed to Xenophanes the philosophy of Parmenides than Theaetetus, 160 D, proves that Plato attributed to Homer the philosophy of Heraclitus. Again, Aristotle's description of Xenophanes as the first of the Eleatic unitarians does not necessarily imply that the unity asserted by Xenophanes was the unity asserted by Parmenides; the phrase, “contemplating the firmament, he declared that the One is God,” leaves it doubtful whether Aristotle attributed to Xenophanes any philosophical theory whatever; and the epithet ἀγροικότερος discourages the belief that Aristotle regarded Xenophanes as the author of a new and important departure. Thirdly, when Xenophanes himself says that theories about gods and about things are not knowledge, that his own utterances are not verities but verisimilitudes, and that, so far from learning things by revelation, man must laboriously seek a better opinion, he plainly renounces the “disinterested pursuit of truth.” If then he was indifferent to the problem, he can hardly be credited with the Eleatic solution. In the judgment of the present writer, Xenophanes was neither a philosopher nor a sceptic. He was not a philosopher, for he despaired of knowledge. He was not a sceptic, if by “sceptic” is meant the misologist whose despair of knowledge is the consequence of disappointed endeavour, for he had never hoped. Rather he was a theologian who arrived at his theory of the unity of the Supreme Being by criticism of the contemporary mythology. But, while he thus stood aloof from philosophy, Xenophanes influenced its development in two ways: first, his theological henism led the way to the philosophical henism of Parmenides and Zeno; secondly, his assertion that so-called knowledge was in reality no more than opinion taught his successors to distinguish knowledge and opinion, and to assign to each a separate province.
Apart from the old controversy about Xenophanes's relations to philosophy, doubts have recently arisen about his theological position. In fragments i., xiv., xvi., xxi., &c., he recognizes, thinks Freudenthal, a plurality of deities; whence it is inferred that, besides the One God, most high, perfect, eternal, who, as immanent intelligent cause, unifies the plurality of things, there were also lesser divinities, who govern portions of the universe, being themselves eternal parts of the one all-embracing Godhead. Whilst It can hardly be allowed that Xenophanes, so far from denying, actually affirms a plurality of gods, it must be conceded to Freudenthal that Xenophanes's polemic was directed against the anthropomorphic tendencies and the mythological details of the contemporary polytheism rather than against the polytheistic principle, and that, apart from the treatise De Melisso Xenophane et Gorgia, now generally discredited, there is no direct evidence to prove him a consistent monotheist. The wisdom of Xenophanes, like the wisdom of the Hebrew Preacher, showed itself, not in a theory of the universe, but in a sorrowful recognition of the nothingness of things and the futility of endeavour. His theism was a declaration not so much of the greatness of God as rather of the littleness of man. His cosmology was an assertion not so much of the immutability of the One as rather of the mutability of the Many. Like Socrates, he was not a philosopher, and did not pretend to be one; but, as the reasoned scepticism of Socrates cleared the way (or the philosophy of Plato, so did Xenophanes's “abnormis sapientia” for the philosophy of Parmenides.
Bibliography.—S. Karsten, Xenophanis Colophonii Carminum Reliquiae (Brussels, 1830); F. W. A. Mullach, Frag. Phil. Graec. (Paris, 1860), i. 99-108; G. Teichmüller, Studien z. Gesch. d. Begriffe (Berlin, 1874), pp. 589-623; E. Zeller, Phil. d. Griechen (Leipzig, 1877), i. 486-507; J. Freudenthal, Ueber d. Theologie d. Xenophanes (Breslau, 1886), and “Zur Lehre d. Xen.,” in Archiv f. Gesch. d. Philos. (Berlin, 1888), i. 322-347; H. Diels, Poetarum Philosophorum Fragmenta (Berlin, 1901); and Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Berlin, 1906). For fuller bibliography, including the controversy about the De Melisso Xen. et Gorgia, see Ueberweg, Grundriss d. Gesch. d. Philos. (Berlin, 1871), i. § 17. See also Parmenides.
(H. Ja.)
XENOPHON, Greek historian and philosophical essayist, the son of Gryllus, was born at Athens about 430 B.C.[1] He belonged to an equestrian family of the deme of Erchia. It may be inferred from passages in the Hellenica that he fought at Arginusae (406), and that he was present at the return of Alcibiades (408), the trial of the Generals and the overthrow of the Thirty. Early in life he came under the influence of Socrates, but an active life had more attraction for him. In 401, being invited by his friend Proxenus to join the expedition of the younger Cyrus against his brother, Artaxerxes II. of Persia, he at once accepted the offer. It held out the prospect of riches and honour, while he was little likely to find favour in democratic Athens, where the knights were regarded with suspicion as having supported the Thirty. At the suggestion of Socrates, Xenophon went to Delphi to consult the oracle; but his mind was already made up, and he at once proceeded to Sardis, the place of rendezvous. Of the expedition itself he has given a full and detailed account in his Anabasis, or the “Up-Country March.” After the battle of Cunaxa (401), in which Cyrus lost his life, the officers in command of the Greeks were treacherously murdered by the Persian satrap Tissaphernes, with whom they were negotiating an armistice with a view to a safe return. The army was now in the heart of an unknown country, more than a thousand miles from home and in the presence of a troublesome enemy. It was decided to march northwards up the Tigris valley and make for the shores of the Euxine, on which there were several Greek colonies. Xenophon became the leading spirit of the army; he was elected an officer, and he it was who mainly directed the retreat. Part of the way lay through the wilds of Kurdistan, where they had to encounter the harassing guerrilla attacks of savage mountain tribes, and part through the highlands of Armenia and Georgia. After a five months' march they reached Trapezus [Trebizond] on the Euxine (February 400), where a tendency to demoralization began to show itself, and even Xenophon almost lost his control over the soldiery. At Cotyora he aspired to found a new colony; but the idea, not being unanimously accepted, was abandoned, and ultimately Xenophon with his Greeks arrived at Chrysopolis [Scutari] on the Bosporus, opposite Byzantium. After a brief period of service under a Thracian chief, Seuthes, they were finally incorporated in a Lacedaemonian army which
- ↑ As the description of the Ionian campaign of Thrasyllus in 410 (Hellenica, i. 2) is clearly derived from Xenophon's own reminiscences, he must have taken part in this campaign, and cannot therefore have been less than twenty years of age at the time.
