Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/272

250 250 HISTORY OP THE vered up their country in Asia Minor to the Persians, and had been forced by the enmity of the Etruscans and Carthaginians to abandon their first settlement in Corsica ; which happened about the 61st Olym- piad, b. c. 536. It is probable that Xenophanes, a native of Colophon, was concerned in the colonizing of Elea ; he wrote an epic poem of two thousand verses upon this settlement, as he had sung the foundation of Colophon ; he has been before mentioned as an elegiac poet.* It appears that poetry was (he main employment of his earlier years, and that he did not attach himself to philosophy until he had settled at Elea: for there is no trace of the influence of his Ionic countrymen in his philosophy ; and again his philosophy was established only in Elea, and never gained a footing among the Ionians in Asia Minor. All the chronological statements are consistent with the supposition that he flourished in Elea as a philosopher between the 65th and 70th Olym- piads, t But, even as a philosopher, Xenophanes retained the poetic form of composition ; his work upon nature was written in epic language and metre, and he himself recited it at public festivals after the manner of a rhapsodist.J This deviation from the practice of the Ionic phy- sical philosophers, (of whom, at least, Anaximander and Anaximenes must have been known to him,) can hardly be explained by the fact that he had, upon other subjects, accustomed himself to a poetical form. Some other and weightier cause must have induced him to deliver his thoughts upon the nature of things in a more dignified and pretending manner than his predecessors. This cause, doubtless, was the elevation and enthusiasm of mind, which were connected with the fundamental principles of the Eleatic philosophy. Xenophanes, from the first, adopted a different principle from that of the Ionic physical philosophers ; for he proceeded upon an ideal system, while their system was exclusively founded upon experience. Xeno- phanes began with the idea of the godhead, and showed the necessity of conceiving it as an eternal and unchanging existence. § The lofty idea of an everlasting and immutable God, who is all spirit and mind,|| was described in his poem as the only true knowledge. " Wherever (he says) I might direct my thoughts, they always returned to the one and unchanging being; every thing, however I examined it, resolved itself Athen. ii. p. 54. E., probably refers to the arrival of the army of Cyrus in Ionia. •)■ Especially that he mentioned Pythagoras, and that Heraclitus and Epicharmus mentioned him. Xenophanes lived at Zancle (Diog. Laert. ix. 18) ; evidently not till after it had become Ionian, that is, after Olymp. 70. 4. b.c. 497. He is also said to have been alive in the reign of Hiero, Olymp. 75. 3. B. c. 478. (See Clin- ton F. H. ad a. 477.) J aliro; ieeecypuin Ta avrou. § See principally the treatise of Aristotle (or Theophrastus) de Xenophane, Ze« none, et Gorgia. Xenophanis Colophonii carminum reliquiae, ed. S. Ksrsten. Brux. 1830.
 * Chap. X; § 16. The verse of Xenophanes, n»x/x«; r,o-P of S M>i$«j afixirn,
 * This idea is expressed in the verse : olxo; o^a, 6u>.o; Vt toi7, ouXa Vi r ukovu. See