What we do know for certain is that Xenophanes had led a wandering life from the age of twenty-five, and that he was still alive and making poetry at the age of ninety-two. He says himself (fr. 8 = 24 Karst.; R. P. 97):
There are by this time threescore years and seven that have tossed my careworn soul[1] up and down the land of Hellas; and there were then five-and-twenty years from my birth, if I can say aught truly about these matters.
It is tempting to suppose that in this passage Xenophanes was referring to the conquest of Ionia by Harpagos, and that he is, in fact, answering the question asked in another poem[2] (fr. 22 = 17 Karst.; R. P. 95 a):
This is the sort of thing we should say by the fireside in the winter-time, as we lie on soft couches after a good meal, drinking sweet wine and crunching chickpeas: "Of what country are you, and how old are you, good sir? And how old were you when the Mede appeared?"
In that case, his birth would fall in 565 B.C., and his connexion with Hieron would be quite credible. We note also that he referred to Pythagoras in the past tense, and is in turn so referred to by Herakleitos.[3]
Theophrastos said that Xenophanes had "heard" Anaximander,[4] and we shall see that he was acquainted with the Ionian cosmology. When driven from his native city, he lived in Sicily, chiefly, we are told, at Zankle and Katana.[5] Like Archilochos before him, he unburdened his soul in elegies and satires, which he recited at the banquets where, we may suppose, the refugees tried to keep up the
- ↑ Bergk (Litteraturgesch. ii. p. 418, n. 23) took φροντίς here to mean the literary work of Xenophanes, but it is surely an anachronism to suppose that at this date it could be used like the Latin cura.
- ↑ It was certainly another poem ; for it is in hexameters, while the preceding fragment is in elegiacs.
- ↑ Xenophanes, fr. 7; Herakleitos, frs. 16, 17.
- ↑ Diog. ix. 21 (R. P. 96 a).
- ↑ Diog. ix. 18 (R. P. 96). The use of the old name Zankle, instead of the later Messene, points to an early source for this statement—probably the elegies of Xenophanes himself.
