usages of good Ionian society. The statement that he was a rhapsode has no foundation at all.[1] The singer of elegies was no professional like the rhapsode, but the social equal of his listeners. In his ninety-second year he was still, we have seen, leading a wandering life, which is hardly consistent with the statement that he settled at Elea and founded a school there, especially if we are to think of him as spending his last days at Hieron's court.[2] It is very remarkable that no ancient writer expressly says he ever was at Elea,[3] and all the evidence we have seems inconsistent with his having settled there at all.
56.Poems. According to Diogenes, Xenophanes wrote in hexameters and also composed elegies and iambics against Homer and Hesiod.[4] No good authority says anything of his having written a philosophical poem.[5] Simplicius tells us he had never met with the verses about the earth
- ↑ Diog. ix. 18 (R. P. 97) says αὐτὸς ἐρραψῴδει τὰ ἑαυτοῦ, which is a very different thing. Nothing is said anywhere of his reciting Homer. Gomperz's imaginative picture (Greek Thinkers, vol. i. p. 155) has no further support than this single word.
- ↑ Diog. ix. 20 (R. P. 97) says he wrote a poem in 2000 hexameters on the colonisation of Elea. Even if true, this would not prove he lived there; for the foundation of Elea would be a subject of interest to all the Ionian émigrés. Moreover, the statement is very suspicious. The stichometric notices of the Seven Wise Men, Epimenides, etc., in Diogenes come from the forger Lobon, and this seems to be from the same source.
- ↑ The only passage which brings him into connexion with Elea is Aristotle's anecdote about the answer he gave the Eleates when they asked him whether they should sacrifice to Leukothea. "If you think her a goddess," he said, "do not lament her; if you do not, do not sacrifice to her" (Rhet. B, 26. 1400 b 5; R.P. 98 a). Even this does not necessarily imply that he settled at Elea, and in any case such anecdotes are really anonymous. Plutarch tells the story more than once, but he makes it a remark of Xenophanes to the Egyptians (Diels, Vors. II A 13), while others tell it of Herakleitos.
- ↑ Diog. ix. 18 (R. P. 97) The word ἐπικόπτων is a reminiscence of Timon fr. 60 (Diels), Ξεινοφάνης ὑπάτυφος Ὁμηραπάτης ἐπικόπτης.
- ↑ The oldest reference to a poem Περὶ φύσεως is in the Geneva scholium on Il. xxi. 196 (quoting fr. 30), and this goes back to Krates of Mallos. We must remember that such titles are of later date, and Xenophanes had been given a place among philosophers long before the time of Krates. All we can say, therefore, is that the Pergamene librarians gave the title Περὶ φύσεως to some poem of Xenophanes.
