Diog. ix. 18 (R. P. 96). The use of the old name Zankle, instead of the later Messene, points to an early source for this statement—probably the elegies of Xenophanes himself. Footnote 276: Diog. ix. 18 (R. P. 97) says αὐτὸς ἐρραψῴδει τὰ ἑαυτοῦ, which is a very different thing. Nothing is said anywhere of his reciting Homer, and the word ῥαψῳδεῖν is used quite loosely for “to recite.” Gomperz’s imaginative picture (_Greek Thinkers_, vol. i. p. 155) has no further support than this single word. Nor is there any trace of Homeric influence in the fragments. They are in the usual elegiac style. Footnote 277: The statement is justly suspected by Hiller (_Rh. Mus._ xxxiii. p. 529) to come from Lobon of Argos, who provided the Seven Wise Men, Epimenides, etc., with stichometric notices, all duly recorded in Diogenes. Even if true, however, it proves nothing. Footnote 278: Arist. _Rhet._ Β, 26. 1400 b 5 (R. P. 98 a). Anecdotes like this are really anonymous. Plutarch transfers the story to Egypt (_P. Ph. Fr._ p. 22, § 13), and others tell it of Herakleitos. It is hardly safe to build on such a foundation. [Sidenote: Poems.] 56. According to a notice preserved in Diogenes, Xenophanes wrote in hexameters and also composed elegies and iambics against Homer and Hesiod.[279] No good authority says anything about his having written a philosophical poem.[280] Simplicius tells us he had never met with the verses about the earth stretching infinitely downwards (fr. 28),[281] and this means that the Academy possessed no copy of such a poem, which would be very strange if it had ever existed. Simplicius was able to find the complete works of much smaller men. Nor does internal evidence lend any support to the view that he wrote a philosophical poem. Diels refers about twenty-eight lines to it, but they would all come in quite as naturally in his attacks on Homer and Hesiod, as I have endeavoured to show. It is also significant that a considerable number of them are derived from commentators on Homer.[282] It seems probable, then, that Xenophanes expressed his theological and philosophical views incidentally in his satires. That would be quite in the manner of the time, as we can see from the remains of Epicharmos. Footnote 279: Diog. ix. 18 (R. P. 97). The word ἐπικόπτων is a reminiscence of Timon, fr. 60; Diels, Ξεινοφάνης ὑπάτυφος Ὁμηραπάτης ἐπικόπτης. Footnote 280: The oldest reference to a poem Περὶ φύσεως is in the Geneva scholium on _Il._ xxi. 196 (quoting fr. 30), and this goes back to Krates of Mallos. We must remember, however, that such titles are of later date than Xenophanes, and he had been given a place among philosophers long before the time of Krates. All we can say, therefore, is that the Pergamene librarians gave the title Περὶ φύσεως to some poem of Xenophanes. Footnote 281: