Part 27

20. Having learned profitless luxuries from the Lydians, while as yet they had no experience of hateful tyranny, they proceeded into the market-place, no less than a thousand in number all told, with purple garments completely covering them, boastful, proud of their comely locks, anointed with unguents of rich perfume.

21. For now the floor is clean, the hands of all and the cups are clean; one puts on the woven garlands, another passes around the fragrant ointment in a vase; the mixing bowl stands full of good cheer, and more wine, mild and of delicate bouquet, is at hand in jars, which {5} says it will never fail. In the midst frankincense sends forth its sacred fragrance, and there is water, cold, and sweet, and pure; the yellow loaves are near at hand, and the table of honour is loaded with cheese and rich honey. The altar in the midst is thickly covered with {10} flowers on every side; singing and mirth fill the house. Men making merry should first hymn the god with propitious stanzas and pure words; and when they have poured out libations and prayed for power to do the right (since this lies nearest at hand), then it is no unfitting {15} thing to drink as much as will not prevent your walking home without a slave, if you are not very old. And one ought to praise that man who, when he has drunk, unfolds noble things as his memory and his toil for virtue suggest; but there is nothing praiseworthy in {20} discussing battles of Titans or of Giants or Centaurs, fictions of former ages, nor in plotting violent revolutions. But it is good always to pay careful respect to the gods.

22. For sending the thigh-bone of a goat, thou didst receive the rich leg of a fatted bull, an honourable present to a man, the fame whereof shall come to all Greece, and shall not cease so long as there is a race of Greek bards.

23. Nor would any one first pour the wine into the cup to mix it, but water first and the wine above it.

24. Already now sixty-seven years my thoughts have been tossed restlessly up and down Greece, but then it was twenty and five years from my birth, if I know how to speak the truth about these things.

25. Nor is this (an oath) an equal demand to make of an impious man as compared with a pious man.

26. Much more feeble than an aged man.

27. Bacchic wands of fir stand about the firmly built house.

28. From the beginning, according to Homer, since all have learned them.

29. If the god had not made light-coloured honey, I should have said that a fig was far sweeter.

30. Holy water trickles down in thy grottoes.

31. As many things as they have made plain for mortals to see!

SAYINGS OF XENOPHANES.

Arist. Rhet. ii. 23; 1399 b 6 (Karsten, Fr. 34). Xenophanes asserts that those who say the gods are born are as impious as those who say that they die; for in both cases it amounts to this, that the gods do not exist at all.

Ibid. 1400 b 5 (K. 35). When the inhabitants of Elea asked Xenophanes whether they should sacrifice to Leukothea and sing a dirge or not, he advised them not to sing a dirge if they thought her divine, and if they thought her human not to sacrifice to her.

Plutarch, de vit. pud. p. 530 F (K. 36). When Lasos, son of Hermiones, called that man a coward who was unwilling to play at dice with him, Xenophanes answered that he was very cowardly and without daring in regard to dishonourable things.

Diog. Laer. ix. 20 (K. 37). When Empedokles said to him (Xenophanes) that the wise man was not to be found, he answered: Naturally, for it would take a wise man to recognise a wise man.

Plut. de comm. not. p. 1084 E (K. 38). Xenophanes, when some one told him that he had seen eels living in hot water, said: Then we will boil them in cold water.

Diog. Laer. ix. 19 (K. 39). ‘Have intercourse with tyrants either as little as possible, or as agreeably as possible.’

Clem. Al. Strom. vii. p. 841. And Greeks suppose the gods to be like men in their passions as well as in their forms; and accordingly they represent them, each race in forms like their own, in the words of Xenophanes: Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed, Thracians red-haired and with blue eyes; so also they conceive the spirits of the gods to be like themselves.

A. Gellius, Noct. Att. iii. 11 (K. 31). Some writers have stated that Homer antedated Hesiod, and among these were Philochoros and Xenophanes of Kolophon; others assert that he was later than Hesiod.

(b) PASSAGES RELATING TO XENOPHANES IN PLATO AND ARISTOTLE.

Plato, Soph. 242 D. And the Eleatic group of thinkers among us, beginning with Xenophanes and even earlier, set forth in tales how what men call all things is really one.

De Coelo, ii. 13; 294 a 21. On this account some assert that there is no limit to the earth underneath us, saying that it is rooted in infinity, as, for instance, Xenophanes of Kolophon; in order that they may not have the trouble of seeking the cause.

De mirac. oscult. 38; 833 a 16. The fire at Lipara, Xenophanes says, ceased once for sixteen years, and came back in the seventeenth. And he says that the lava-stream from Aetna is neither of the nature of fire, nor is it continuous, but it appears at intervals of many years.

Metaph. i. 5; 986 b 10. There are some who have expressed the opinion about the All that it is one in its essential nature, but they have not expressed this opinion after the same manner nor in an orderly or natural way. 986 b 23. Xenophanes first taught the unity of these things (Parmenides is said to have been his pupil), but he did not make anything clear, nor did he seem to get at the nature of either of these things, but looking up into the broad heavens he said: The unity is god. These, as we have said, are to be dismissed from the present investigation, two of them entirely as being rather more crude, Xenophanes and Melissos; but Parmenides seems to speak in some places with greater care.

(c) PASSAGES RELATING TO XENOPHANES IN THE ‘DOXOGRAPHISTS.’

Theophrastos, Fr. 5; Simpl. Phys. 5 v: 22, 36; Dox. 480. Theophrastos says that Xenophanes of Kolophon, teacher of Parmenides, asserted that the first principle is one, and that being is one and all-embracing, and is neither limited nor infinite, neither moving nor at rest. Theophrastos admits, however, that the record of his opinion is derived from some other source than the investigation of nature. This all-embracing unity Xenophanes called god; he shows that god is one because god is the most powerful of all things; for, he says, if there be a multiplicity of things, it is necessary that power should exist in them all alike; but the most powerful and most excellent of all things is god. And he shows that god must have been without beginning, since whatever comes into being must come either from what is like it or from what is unlike it; but, he says, it is no more natural that like should give birth to like, than that like should be born from like; but if it had sprung from what is unlike it, then being would have sprung from not-being. So he showed that god is without beginning and eternal. Nor is it either infinite or subject to limits; for not-being is infinite, as having neither beginning nor middle nor end; moreover limits arise through the relation of a multiplicity of things to each other. Similarly he denies to it both motion and rest; for not-being is immovable, since neither could anything else come into it nor could it itself come into anything else; motion, on the one hand, arises among the several parts of the one, for one thing changes its position with reference to another, so that when he says that it abides in the same state and is not moved (Frag. 4.), ‘And it always abides in the same place, not moved at all, nor is it fitting that it should move from one place to another,’ he does not mean that it abides in a rest that is the antithesis of motion, but rather in a stillness that is out of the sphere of both motion and rest. Nikolaos of Damascus in his book On the Gods mentions him as saying that the first principle of things is infinite and immovable. According to Alexander he regards this principle as limited and spherical. But that Xenophanes shows it to be neither limited nor infinite is clear from the very words quoted,—Alexander says that he regarded it as limited and spherical because it is homogeneous throughout; and he holds that it perceives all things, saying (Frag. 3) ‘But without effort he sets in motion all things by mind and thought.’