he lived during the sixth century B.C., and as his life was protracted to an extreme old age, we may regard it as extending almost from 600 B.C. to 500 B.C.
3. At this time the art of prose writing had not begun to be cultivated. The opinions and sentiments of Xenophanes were accordingly delivered in verse. He seems to have been a composer and reciter of various kinds of poetry, some fragments of which have been preserved in the writings of Athenæus, Sextus Empiricus, and some other ancient authors. These relics have been collected, along with those of Parmenides, by Karsten, a Dutch scholar, and were published by him in 1830.
4. The doctrines of Xenophanes were rather theological than speculative. One of his principal aims was to disabuse the minds of his countrymen of the ideas about the gods which had been instilled into them by the poems of Homer and Hesiod. In his opening fragment he proclaims a doctrine of monotheism, and condemns anthropomorphism, or that creed which fashions God after the likeness of men.
Εἷς θεὸς ἔν τε θεοῖσι καὶ ἀνθρώποισι μέγιστος,
Οὔτε δέμας θνητοῖσιν ὁμοίιος οὔτε νόημα.
"There is one mightiest God among gods and men, like to mortals neither in body nor in mind." Of this being he says: "Without labour he governs all things with the power of reason,`" ἀλλ᾽ ἀπάνευθε
