Xenophanes

ze-nof'a-nez (570-480 B. C.), a Greek philosopher. He was born at Colophon, Asia Minor. He was banished from the city and settled finally at Elea in Lower Italy. Here he founded the Eleatic school of philosophy of which Zeno was a distinguished member. Xenophanes and his friends may be regarded as Grecian Unitarians. He attacked the mythology of Homer and Hesiod, declaring that these poets ascribed actions to the gods that would disgrace any man. The fragments of his scientific writings that remain show that the world had scientific leaders 2,000 years before it had people sufficiently intelligent to follow them. In physics, he taught that earth and water are the elements of all created things. He held that the stars were fiery clouds. In geology, he believed that the fossils of sea animals found in the marble quarries of Syracuse, and even high up on the mountains, were to be explained by the theory that the surface of the earth had been subject to alternate elevation and subsidence.