Ancient · c. 570–478 BC
Who did Xenophanes influence?
Students and legacy
Mocked anthropomorphic gods and argued for one supreme, unmoving deity.
Xenophanes influenced Parmenides. That is 1 line of the 448 documented lines of influence between the 279 thinkers on this map.
Read on Wikipedia Portrait: Unknown author, Public domain See the whole map
Who was Xenophanes?
Xenophanes of Colophon was a poet and philosopher who travelled the Greek world. His poems, among the first satires, mocked the cult of wealth, luxury and athletic victory and attacked Homer for picturing the gods as foolish and immoral.
He explained clouds and rainbows by natural causes instead of myth and distinguished knowledge from belief, an early piece of epistemology. Only fragments of his work survive. The Eleatics and the Pyrrhonists later claimed him as their founder, though modern scholars doubt both claims.
Summarized from the lead of the Wikipedia article.
Who did Xenophanes influence?
1 thinker on this map draws directly on Xenophanes.
- Parmenides c. 515–450 BC
Two steps away from Xenophanes
The second generation
- Through Parmenides: Leucippus, Zeno of Elea, Empedocles, Plato
Contemporaries of Xenophanes
Thinkers on this map born within 25 years of Xenophanes, with no direct line between them.
- Pythagoras c. 570–495 BC
- Laozi c. 6th c. BC
- Anaximenes of Miletus c. 586–526 BC
- Confucius 551–479 BC
- Theano 6th c. BC
Xenophanes by the numbers
- Direct influences
- 0
- Direct followers
- 1
- Thinkers upstream
- 0
- Thinkers downstream
- 204
- Wikipedia languages
- 72 — #28 of 54 among ancient philosophers
- Card rarity
- Epic
Questions about Xenophanes
- Who influenced Xenophanes?
- No earlier thinker on this map is recorded as a direct influence on Xenophanes.
- Who did Xenophanes influence?
- Parmenides.
- When did Xenophanes live?
- c. 570–478 BC. The map files Xenophanes under the ancient world.
- How rare is the Xenophanes card?
- Wikipedia carries an article on Xenophanes in 72 languages, which makes it an Epic card. Legendary starts at 100 languages, Epic at 50 and Rare at 25.
More ancient philosophers
- Confucius 551–479 BC
- Aristotle 384–322 BC
- Plato c. 428–348 BC
- Socrates c. 470–399 BC
- Pythagoras c. 570–495 BC
- Laozi c. 6th c. BC
- Cicero 106–43 BC
- Thales of Miletus c. 624–546 BC