  Five surviving fragments and roughly a dozen testimonia address what might be termed ‘epistemological questions’—“How much can any mortal being hope to know?”, “Does truth come to us through our own efforts or by divine revelation?”, and “What role do our sense faculties play in the acquisition of knowledge?” Unfortunately, the picture that emerges from many of the testimonia largely contradicts what appear to be the views Xenophanes himself expressed. According to the summary in the pseudo-Plutarch Miscellanies, Xenophanes “declares that the senses are deceptive and generally rejects reason along with them” (A32.) Similarly, in his Concerning Philosophy Aristocles reports that “…since they think that sense perceptions and appearances must be rejected and trust only reason. For at one earlier time Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno, and Melissus said something of this sort” (A49). Similarly, Aëtius declares that “Pythagoras, Empedocles, and Xenophanes (say that) sense perceptions are deceptive” (A49). Yet, as we have noted, B28 refers without qualification to “the upper limit of the earth that is seen (horatai) here at our feet” and B32 appears to encourage those in Xenophanes’ audience to ‘look at’ or ‘observe’ (idesthai) the multi-colored cloud that is the rainbow. The realistic description of the sumptuous banquet in B1 and the wide range of Xenophanes’ reported geographical and geological interests all sit poorly with an Eleatic “rationalism” that would dismiss all information gained through our faculties of sense and construct on the basis of reason alone a view of “what is” as a motionless, changeless and eternal unity.