travelled througout Hellas reciting poetry, usually his own his work written in verse. Most importantly - his criticism of Greek popular religion, from the basis of a new view, a kind a pantheism, which is an anticipation of the doctrine of the oneness of being that was developed in the Eleatic school.
Critique of "normal" society (the "countercultural" dimension of philosophy as a way of life): Wlsdom is superior to brute force, physical skill: the adulation accorded to the winners of the games, races, etc., is unmerited.
Critique of traditional conceptions of the gods, "normal" religion: The gods of Homer and Hesiod are immoral and absurd. From them one can learn only robbery, adultery and deception. Xenophanes urther rejected the anthropomorphic concept of the gods: just as the Ethiopians conceived of gods as being flat-nosed and black, lions or oxen would - if they could - make their gods in the image of lions or oxen.
In place of anthopomorphic polytheism , the "god of the philosophers"- a kind of rational mono-pan-theism:
A single god, the greatest among gods and men, not similar to men either in form or in thought....He sees in his entirety, thinks ln hls entirety, hears in his entirety....But without effort he governs everything by the force of his spirit....And he dwells always in the same place, without moving at all, nor does it sult hlm to displace himself from one side to the other. (Diels, frag. 23-26)
Aristotle said that Xenophanes was the first person who "one-ized" thlngs - hence a precursor of the Eleatics (Zeno, Parmenides)