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A strikingly original thinker, Xenophanes knew that fossilized marine organisms had been found on Mediterranean islands like Malta, south of Italy, and Paros, near Athens.

Pythagoras taught that God is a number; Xenophanes that it is a sphere, passionless and consubstantial with all things; Parmenides that it is but the confluence of earth and fire.

Xenophanes of Colophon famously ridiculed the anthropomorphic projections of human religion: if every different ethnic society imagines the gods look like them, how can they all be right?

All is but a woven web of guesses, the early philosopher of science, Xenophanes, wrote—but if the weaving is taut, the web holds water, or stars.

Had such heresies been spoken in Athens, where the effects of a religious revival were still in force, the “secular arm” of the archons would probably have made short work of Xenophanes.