Xenophanes wandered the Greek world for sixty-seven years, and he left behind something sharper than most settled thinkers: the observation that Ethiopians say their gods are dark and flat-nosed, while Thracians say theirs are red-haired and blue-eyed. If horses could draw gods, he added, they would draw them as horses. Behind the joke was a genuine claim: God — one, not many — is nothing like a human body. It does not travel, does not feel anger, does not change. It perceives the whole by mind alone. The nature of things, meanwhile, is not water or fire but earth and water mixed. He doubted that humans can ever achieve certainty, only better and better opinion. That combination of critique and humility, aimed at both religion and knowledge, makes him the first philosopher of human limits.
Born in the Ionian city of Colophon, near the sanctuary of Claros, in the generation when Ionia's cities were falling under Persian rule.
Words
“If oxen and horses and lions had hands and could draw, horses would draw the forms of the gods like horses, and oxen like oxen.”