"Xenophanes, son of Dexios or (according to Apollodoros) Orthomenes, of Colophon, is mentioned in the work of Timon. He says:

'Xenophanes, mildly modest, Homer trodder,
fashioned an unhuman god, more thoughtful than thought

Banished from his native city he participated in the colonization of Elea in Sicily and taught there, and he also taught at Catane.

"Xenophanes, the son of Dexinos, student of Archelaus the Physicist, lived ninety-one years."

"... as Xenophanes says, that those are just as impious who say that the gods were born as to say that they died, either statement implying that they did not exist at some time."

"... as Xenophanes replied to the people of Elea who asked whether they should sacrifice to Leukothea and sing threnodies, or not: 'if they believed she was divine, make no songs of lament, if they believed she was a human being, make no sacrifice.'"

Xenophanes of Colophon puts it well indeed in teaching that god is one and without a body (asomatos):

"There is one god, greatest among gods and men,
who is not like human beings either in form (demas) or in thought (noema)."

"... and (Xenophanes) says that it [The All] perceives (noein) everything,

'but perceiving without effort it moves all things with its mind (phreni)'"

"...so that when (Xenophanes) says that it remains in the same place and does not move

It always remains in the same place, moving not at all,
nor does it befit It to move about now this way, now that....

"Xenophanes, refuting Homer and Hesiod and their followers, says:

'Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods everything
which is shame (oneidea) and blame (psogos) for human beings:
stealing, committing adultery, and deceiving one another.'"

"But mortals seem to have given birth to the gods
to have their garb (estheta), voice (phone), and form (demas).
...
Now if horses or oxen or lions had hands
or the power to paint and to make the works that men make,
then each one would represent their gods in painting and sculpture with the same bodies
and forms as each one possesses...."

The Greeks give their gods human passions as well as human shape; and even as each race of men depict their forms like their own --in the words of Xenophanes:

The Ethiopians say that their gods are snub-nosed and black,
the Thracians that theirs have gray (glaukous) eyes and red hair.

ADDITIONAL MATERIALS:

• Xenophanes Fragments, in Greek and English (U. New Hampshire)
• John Burnet The Presocratic Philosophers
• H. de Young, "The Homeric Gods and Xenophanes' Opposing Theory of the Divine"