36 SCIENCE IN GRECO-ROMAN ANTIQUITY 



science along rational paths. Some Pythagoreans also, 

 for example, Philolaus and Alcmaeon, carried out 

 successful physiological and medical researches. 



3. THE ELEATIC SCHOOL 



Xenophanes is generally considered the foremost 

 representative of this school ; he was born in 576 B.C. 

 at Colophon, when this opulent city had been under 

 the Lydians for 60 years. Driven from his native land, 

 he travelled through Greece, criticizing the religious 

 opinions and social customs of his time. 1 He finally 

 settled in Sicily, but he does not seem to have stayed 

 at Elea, although he had composed a poem in honour 

 of this town. He died in 480 B.C. The cosmology of 

 Xenophanes is not of great scientific interest for his 

 aim was primarily to discredit anthropomorphic con- 

 ceptions of the divinity. Being convinced that men 

 made gods in their own image, Xenophanes affirmed 

 the existence of a God, one, eternal, immovable who, 

 seeing and hearing all, governs all things. This 

 affirmation must not, however, be interpreted in the 

 sense of a spiritualistic monotheism. The one God of 

 Xenophanes is the heaven, the perceptible universe to 

 which the poet attributes senses and intelligence. It 

 is composed of two regions : the earth, flat and immov- 

 able, which extends in all directions, and the air which 

 covers it, also illimitable. The heavenly bodies have 

 nothing of the divine, they are incandescent clouds, 

 similar to St. Elmo's fire ; they become ignited at one 

 end of the earth, then follow a rectilinear trajectory, and, 

 as meteorites, bury themselves in the sands of the desert. 

 The moist vapours of the night incessantly form new 

 clouds, which are lit up in the morning ; in this way a 



1 14 Gomperz, Penseurs (1, p. 167), represents his life as 

 that of a Homeric poet ; but 8 Burnet, Amove, p. 129, disputes 

 this point. 



