54. Anaximander had regarded the heavenly bodies as wheels of “air” filled with fire which escapes through certain openings ([§ 19]), and there is evidence that Pythagoras adopted the same view.[[262]] We have seen that Anaximander only assumed the existence of three such wheels, and held that the wheel of the sun was the lowest. It is extremely probable that Pythagoras identified the intervals between these rings with the three musical intervals which he had discovered, the fourth, the fifth, and the octave. That would be the most natural beginning for the later doctrine of the “harmony of the spheres,” though that expression would be doubly misleading if applied to any theory we can properly ascribe to Pythagoras himself. The word ἁρμονία does not mean harmony, and the “spheres” are an anachronism. We are still at the stage when wheels or rings were considered sufficient to account for the motions of the heavenly bodies. It is also to be observed that sun, moon, planets, and fixed stars must all be regarded as moving in the same direction from east to west. Pythagoras certainly did not ascribe to the planets an orbital motion of their own from west to east. The old idea was rather that they were left behind more or less every day. As compared with the fixed stars, Saturn is left behind least of all, and the Moon most; so, instead of saying that the Moon took a shorter time than Saturn to complete its path through the signs of the Zodiac, men said Saturn travelled quicker than the Moon, because it more nearly succeeds in keeping up with the signs. Instead of holding that Saturn takes thirty years to complete its revolution, they said it took the fixed stars thirty years to pass Saturn, and only twenty-nine days and a half to pass the Moon. This is one of the most important points to bear in mind regarding the planetary systems of the Greeks, and we shall return to it again.[[263]]
The account just given of the views of Pythagoras is, no doubt, conjectural and incomplete. We have simply assigned to him those portions of the Pythagorean system which appear to be the oldest, and it has not even been possible at this stage to cite fully the evidence on which our discussion is based. It will only appear in its true light when we have examined the second part of the poem of Parmenides and the system of the later Pythagoreans.[[264]] For reasons which will then be apparent, I do not venture to ascribe to Pythagoras himself the theory of the earth’s revolution round the central fire. It seems safest to suppose that he still adhered to the geocentric hypothesis of Anaximander. In spite of this, however, it will be clear that he opened a new period in the development of Greek science, and it was certainly to his school that its greatest discoveries were directly or indirectly due. When Plato deliberately attributes some of his own most important discoveries to the Pythagoreans, he was acknowledging in a characteristic way the debt he owed them.
II. Xenophanes of Kolophon
Life.
55. We have seen how Pythagoras identified himself with the religious movement of his time; we have now to consider a very different manifestation of the reaction against that view of the gods which the poets had made familiar to every one. Xenophanes denied the anthropomorphic gods altogether, but was quite unaffected by the revival of more primitive ideas that was going on all round him. We still have a fragment of an elegy in which he ridiculed Pythagoras and the doctrine of transmigration. “Once, they say, he was passing by when a dog was being ill-treated. ‘Stop!’ he said, ‘don’t hit it! It is the soul of a friend! I knew it when I heard its voice.’”[[265]] We are also told that he opposed the views of Thales and Pythagoras, and attacked Epimenides, which is likely enough, though no fragments of the kind have come down to us.[[266]] His chief importance lies in the fact that he was the author of the quarrel between philosophy and poetry which culminated in Plato’s Republic.
It is not easy to determine the date of Xenophanes. Timaios said he was a contemporary of Hieron and Epicharmos, and he certainly seems to have played a part in the anecdotical romance of Hieron’s court which amused the Greeks of the fourth century much as that of Croesus and the Seven Wise Men amused those of the fifth.[[267]] As Hieron reigned from 478 to 467 B.C., that would make it impossible to date the birth of Xenophanes much earlier than 570 B.C., even if we suppose him to have lived till the age of a hundred. On the other hand, both Sextus and Clement say that Apollodoros gave Ol. XL. (620-616 B.C.) as the date of his birth, and the former adds that his days were prolonged till the time of Dareios and Cyrus.[[268]] Again, Diogenes, whose information on such matters mostly comes from Apollodoros, says that he flourished in Ol. LX. (540-537 B.C.), and Diels holds that Apollodoros really said so.[[269]] However that may be, it is evident that the date 540 B.C. is based on the assumption that he went to Elea in the year of its foundation, and is, therefore, a mere combination.[[270]]
What we do know for certain is that Xenophanes had led a wandering life from the age of twenty-five, and that he was still alive and making poetry at the age of ninety-two. He says himself (fr. 8 = 24 Karst.; R. P. 97):—
There are by this time threescore years and seven that have tossed my careworn soul[[271]] up and down the land of Hellas; and there were then five-and-twenty years from my birth, if I can say aught truly about these matters.
It is tempting to suppose that in this passage Xenophanes was referring to the conquest of Ionia by Harpagos, and that he is, in fact, answering the question asked in another poem[[272]] (fr. 22 = 17 Karst.; R. P. 95 a):—
This is the sort of thing we should say by the fireside in the winter-time, as we lie on soft couches after a good meal, drinking sweet wine and crunching chickpeas: “Of what country are you, and how old are you, good sir? And how old were you when the Mede appeared?”