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761 
southern part of India from some neighbouring maritime 
country, perhaps from Lybia; whither he came with some 
Egyptian colony, and who had been instructed in the Egyp¬ 
tian mysteries. It is not improbable, that at the time when 
Cambyses conquered Egypt, and dispersed almost the whole 
nation, this impostor might have passed over into India, and, 
propagating his doctrine among an ignorant and superstitious 
people, became an object of universal veneration.— Bruc/c- 
er's Pkilos. by Enfield. 
XELSA, a small town in the north-east of Spain, in Ara¬ 
gon, on the Ebro ; 33 miles south-east of Saragossa. 
XENDAY, a considerable town of Niphon, in Japan; 
115 miles north-east of Jedo. 
XENIA, a post town of the United States, and chief town 
of Green county, Ohio, on the Shawnoe Creek; 3 miles 
from the Little Miami, 30 south-west of Urbana, and 55 
north-north-east of Cincinnati. It is a flourishing town, and 
contains a court-house, a jail, an academy, and had, in 1817, 
about 600 inhabitants. There are two houses of public 
worship in the village, and another in sight, two of brick, 
and the other of stone. The houses recently built, are 
chiefly of brick and stone. 
XEN1L, or Genii., a river of Spain, which rises near 
Granada, and flows into the Guadalquivir at Palma. 
XENOCRATES, a famous Grecian philosopher, was 
born at Chalcedon, in the first year of the 96th Olympiad 
(B.C. 396), and attached himself at first to iEschines, but 
afterwards became a follower of Plato, and succeeded Speu- 
sippus in the chair of the old academy (B.C. 339). His 
temper was gloomy, his aspect severe, and his manners were 
little tinctured with urbanity. Plato took pains to correct 
these obliquities of his disposition and character; and as he 
highly respected his master, he probably improved by his 
instruction, so that he was reckoned as one of his most es¬ 
teemed disciples. Xenocrates was held in such estimation 
among the Athenians for his virtues, and especially his inte¬ 
grity, as well as his wisdom, that in a public trial his simple 
asseveration was accepted instead of an oath, which was 
usually required ; and that even Philip of Macedon found it 
impossible to corrupt him. Dreading his influence, and the 
temptation of a bribe, he declined all private intercourse 
with the Macedonian sovereign, and was honoured by him 
with this testimony; that of all persons who had come to 
him on embassies from foreign states, Xenocrates was the 
only one whose friendship he was not able to purchase. On 
occasion of being employed as an ambassador to the court of 
Antipater, for the redemption of several Athenian captives, 
he waved the honour of accepting the invitation of this 
prince to sit down with him at supper, in the words of Ulys¬ 
ses to Circe, cited from Homer’s Odyss. (1. x. v. 383); thus 
translated,— 
“ What man, whose bosom burns with gen’rous worth, 
His friends enthrall’d, and banish’d from his sight, 
Would taste a selfish, solitary joy ?” 
The patriotic spirit expressed in this appropriate passage 
gratified Antipater so much, that he immediately released 
the prisoners. As another example of his moderation, it is 
alleged, that when Alexander, wishing to mortify Aristotle, 
on account of some accidental pique, sent Xenocrates a 
magnificent present of fifty talents, he accepted only thirty 
minae, returning the residue to the donor with this message; 
that the whole sum was more than he should have been able 
to spend during his whole life. In this instance, he also ma¬ 
nifested a superiority to that kind of jealousy and revenge 
which might have actuated meaner minds, when it is consi¬ 
dered that Aristotle had instituted a school in the Lyceum, in 
opposition to the academy over which Xenocrates presided. 
In the use of food he was singularly abstemious; his chas¬ 
tity was invincible by the seducing arts of Phryne, a cele¬ 
brated Athenian courtesan ; and his humanity was testified 
by the shelter which he afforded to a sparrow that was pur¬ 
sued by a hawk, and fled into his bosom, where he allowed 
Vol.XXIV.No. 1670. 
X E N 
it to remaiu till its enemy was out of sight, alleging that he 
would never betray a suppliant. In the employment of his 
time, he allotted a certain portion of each day to its proper 
business, one of which he devoted to silent meditation. His 
high sense of the importance and utility of mathematical 
studies was sufficiently evinced by his refusing to admit into 
his academy a young man who was ignorant of geometry 
and astronomy, because he was destitute of the handles of 
philosophy. Upon the whole, Xenocrates was eminent, 
both for his purity of morals, and his acquaintance with 
science; and he supported the reputation of the Platonic 
school by his lectures, his writings, and his conduct. His 
life was prolonged to the third year of the 116th Olympiad 
(B. C. 314), or the 82d year of his age, when he accidentally 
fell in the dark into a reservoir of water. 
His philosophic tenets were Platonic; but in his lectures 
he adopted the language of the Pythagoreans. In his sys¬ 
tem, unity and diversity were principles in nature, or gods; 
the former being the father, and the latter the mother of the 
universe. The heavens he represented as divine, and the 
stars as celestial gods ; and besides these divinities, he taught 
that there are terrestrial demons, of a middle order between 
the gods and men, partaking of the nature both of mind and 
body, and, like human beings, capable of passions, and 
liable to diversity of character. He probably conceived with 
Plato, that the superior divinities were ideas, or intelligible 
forms, proceeding immediately from the Supreme Deity, 
and the inferior gods, or demons, to be derived from the 
soul of the world, and, like that principle, compounded of 
a simple and a divisible substance, or of that which always 
remains the same, and that which is liable to change. Dio - 
gen. Laert. Pint, de Virt. Mor. De Is. et Osir. De 
Anim. Gent. Cicero de Nat. Deor. Bruch er's Hist. Phil, 
by Enfield. 
XENO'DOCHY, s. [£evo8o%«3> Gr.] Reception of stran¬ 
gers; hospitality. Cockeram. 
XENOPHANES, the founder of the Eleatic sect, was 
born at Colophon, about the 56th Olympiad (B. C. 556); 
and having left his country, took refuge in Sicily, where he 
gained a subsistence by reciting, in the court of Hiero, elegiac 
and iambic verses, which he had written against the theogo- 
nies of Hesiod and Homer. From Sicily he removed to 
Magna Graecia, where he became a celebrated preceptor in 
the Pythagorean school, without adhering strictly to the 
doctrines of Epimenides, Thales, and Pythagoras. His life 
was prolonged to the advanced age of 100 years, that is, till 
the 81st Olympiad (B.C. 456), during 70 years of which 
he occupied the Pythagorean chair of philosophy. In En¬ 
field’s Philosophy of Brucker we have the following summary 
of the doctrine of Xenophanes:—In metaphysics, he taught, 
that if ever there had been a time when nothing existed, no¬ 
thing could ever have existed. That whatever is, always has 
been from eternity, without deriving its existence from any 
prior principle; that nature is one and without limit; that 
what is one is similar in all its parts, else it would be many ; 
that the one infinite, eternal, and homogeneous universe, is 
immutable and incapable of change; that God is one incor¬ 
poreal eternal being, and, like the universe, spherical in 
form ; that he is of the same nature with the universe, com¬ 
prehending all things within himself; is intelligent, and per¬ 
vades all things; but bears no resemblance to human nature 
either in body or mind. 
In physics, he taught, that there are innumerable worlds; 
that there is in nature no real production, decay, or change; 
that there are four elements, and that the earth is the basis 
of all things; that the stars arise from vapours, which are 
extinguished by day, and ignited by night; that the sun 
consists of fiery particles collected by humid exhalations, 
and daily renewed; that the course of the sun is rectilinear, 
and only appears curvilinear from its great distance; that 
there are as many suns as there are different climates of the 
earth; that the moon is an inhabited world; that the earth, as 
appears from marine shells, which are found at the tops of 
mountains, and in caverns far from the sea, was oucp a gene 
8 F ral 
