III. XENOPHANES OF ELEA
West of Crotona lies the site of ancient Locri. The colony was founded, says Aristotle, by runaway slaves, adulterers, and thieves from Locris in mainland Greece; but perhaps Aristotle had an Old World disdain for the New. Suffering disorder from the defects of their qualities, the colonists applied to the oracle at Delphi for advice, and were told to get themselves laws. Possibly Zaleucus had instructed the oracle, for about 664 he gave to Locri ordinances which, as he said, Athena had dictated to him in a dream. This was the first written code of laws in the history of Greece, though not the first to be handed down by the gods. The Locrians liked it so well that they required any man who wished to propose a new law to speak with a rope around his neck, so that, if his motion failed, he might be hanged with a minimum of public inconvenience.*47
Rounding the toe of Italy northward, the traveler reaches flourishing Reggio, founded by the Messenians about 730 under the name of Rhegion, and known to the Romans as Rhegium. Slipping through the Straits of Messina—probably the “Scylla and Charybdis” of the Odyssey—one comes to where Laus stood; and then to ancient Hyele, the Roman Velia, known to history as Elea because Plato wrote it so, and because only its philosophers are remembered. There Xenophanes of Colophon came about 510, and founded the Eleatic School.
He was a personality as unique as his favorite foe, Pythagoras. A man of dauntless energy and reckless initiative, he wandered for sixty-seven years, he tells us,48 “up and down the land of Hellas,” making observations and enemies everywhere. He wrote and recited philosophical poems, denounced Homer for his impious ribaldry, laughed at superstition, found a port in Elea, and obstinately completed a century before he died.49 Homer and Hesiod, sang Xenophanes, “have ascribed to the gods all deeds that are a shame and a disgrace among men—thieving, adultery, and fraud.”50 But he himself was not a pillar of orthodoxy.
There never was, nor ever will be, any man who knows with certainty the things about the gods. . . . Mortals fancy that gods are born, and wear clothes, and have voice and form like themselves. Yet if oxen and lions had hands, and could paint and fashion images as men do, they would make the pictures and images of their gods in their own likeness; horses would make them like horses, oxen like oxen. Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed; Thracians give theirs blue eyes and red hair. . . . There is one god, supreme among gods and men; resembling mortals neither in form nor in mind. The whole of him sees, the whole of him thinks, the whole of him hears. Without toil he rules all things by the power of his mind.51
This god, says Diogenes Laertius,52 was identified by Xenophanes with the universe. All things, even men, taught the philosopher, are derived from earth and water by natural laws.53 Water once covered nearly all the earth, for marine fossils are found far inland and on mountaintops; and at some future time water will probably cover the whole earth again.54 Nevertheless all change in history, and all separateness in things, are superficial phenomena; beneath the flux and variety of forms is an unchanging unity, which is the innermost reality of God.
From this starting point Xenophanes’ disciple, Parmenides of Elea, proceeded to that idealistic philosophy which was in turn to mold the thought of Plato and Platonists throughout antiquity, and of Europe even to our day.