98 A GEEEK VOLTAIRE. 



the places visited by Ulysses did not exist, that there 

 was no River Ocean which ran round the earth, and 

 that the earth was not shaped like a round saucer with 

 the oracle of Delphi in its centre. The Egyptians 

 laughed in the faces of the Greeks, and called them 

 children, when they talked of their gods of yesterday, 

 and so well did their pupils profit by their lesson, that 

 they soon laughed at the Egyptians for believing in 

 the gods at all. Xenophanes declaimed against the 

 Egyptian myth of an earth-walking, dying, resusci- 

 tated god. He said that if Osiris was a man they 

 should not worship him ; and that if he was a god, 

 they need not lament his sufferings. This remarkable 

 man was the Voltaire" of Greece ; there had been free 

 thinkers before his time, but they had reserved their 

 opinions for their disciples. Xenophanes declared that 

 the truth should be made known to all. He lived 

 like Voltaire to a great age ; he poured forth a multi- 

 tude of controversial works ; he made it his business 

 to attack Homer, and reviled him bitterly for having 

 endowed the gods of his poems with the passions and 

 propensities of men ; he denied the old theory of the 

 golden age, and maintained that civilization was the 

 work of time and of man's own toil. His views were 

 no doubt distasteful to the vulgar crowd by whom he 

 was surrounded ; and even to cultivated and imagina- 

 tive minds which were sunk in sentimental idolatry, 

 blinded by the splendour of the Homeric poems. He 

 was, however, in no way interfered with ; religious 

 persecution was unknown in the Greek world except 

 at Athens. In that city free thought was especially 

 unpopular, because it was imported from abroad. It 

 was the doctrine of those talented Ionians who streamed 

 into Athens after the Persian wars. When one of 



