Greek philosophers
Xenophanes of Colophon
Xenophanes of Colophon was a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher. He was born in 570 BC (Colophon) and died in 475 BC.
After Xenophanes was expelled from his hometown, he travelled extensively, most of all in Sicily.
Xenophanes wrote his works in iambs (elegiac distich and hexameters). His poetry is satirical and often reflective lyricism. In his works he often criticizes Homer and Hesiod through their depictions of the gods and the Olympic Games. He despised superstition, belief in miracles and divination. However, he did not deny the existence of the gods, but questioned whether the gods had a beginning (birth), because what has a beginning has an end.
Xenophanes also criticized the immoral behavior of the gods. He also argued that if people imagine gods similar to themselves, so do animals, which greatly angered society as a whole. Xenophanes' God is incorporeal, not to be depicted, a motionless force without movement in space but with inner agency. This view of the gods was later elaborated by his followers Parmenides and Zeno of Elea.
Xenophanes was also sharply opposed to the use of money as a means of payment, since at that time it was not as common as it would be in the future.
Interestingly, he was the first to suggest that mollusc fossils are the actual remains of animals that once lived in the sea. Furthermore, the Xenophanes crater on the inverted side of the moon is named after him.