Xenophanes
XENOPHANES (c. 580–470 BCE), Ionian poet, satirist, philosopher, and theologian, was born in Colophon, a wealthy city of Ionia under the influence of the Lydian kingdom. Because of Persians' invasion of the city, he had to flee to South Italy. He spent much of his life wandering through Sicily and Greece until he joined a Phokaian colony sent to Elea in Lucania, and he taught there, founding the Eleatic school. His pupil Parmenides was the founder of Western metaphysics. A friend of Empedocles, Xenophanes attacked Pythagoras and was attacked by Heraclitus. He has been considered both an amateur thinker and "a paradigm of the [pre-Socratic] genius" (Barnes, 1982, p. 82). In fact, he was a significant thinker and an innovator in many fields of research, such as natural sciences, morality, and gnosiology. His approach to the problems of human knowledge is so particular (and somewhat contradictory) that he can be defined as a sceptic, an empiricist, a rationalist, a fallibilist, a critical philosopher—or, more accurately, a natural epistemologist. A precise definition of his epistemological attitude clearly influences any evaluation of his theology (see fragment 34: "No man has seen, or ever will see, the exact truth about the gods").
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