Was Xenophanes *Really* a "Proto-Monotheist"?

[endymions_bower]

In response to an inquiry today about Xenophanes, I discovered that a particular testimonium, which has been part of the transmitted corpus pertaining to Xenophanes since the time of Zeller and Diels, has been suppressed entirely from the new Loeb series on the Pre-Socratics. (The volume in question is Loeb Classical Library 526, Early Greek Philosophy, Volume III, Early Ionian Thinkers, Part 2.) 

This text also happens to undermine the conventional wisdom about Xenophanes as a "proto-monotheist". I offer here my own rendering of the passage, which I consider to be quite important: 

He [Xenophanes] declares also concerning the Gods that there is none supreme (hēgemonias) among them; for it is not pious (hosion) that any of the Gods should have a master (despozesthai); and none of them needs (epideisthai) anything at all from any; and that <a God> hears and sees as a whole (katholou) and not by particular organs (kata meros). 

(Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica book I, chap. 8; Diels, Doxographi Graeci 580.14-16)

Xenophanes was critical of anthropomorphism and of thoughtless doctrines concerning the Gods. He speaks of the unity of Being, and of a certain categorical unity of divinity, and of a divine intelligence apparently shared among the Gods, and these are things which have made him useful for monotheistic appropriation, but had history been different he would not have been seen in such a light, because these things would not have been seen as in contradiction to polytheism. Even where he holds positions that would have been outside the mainstream, for example denying divination, these are critiques within polytheism and cannot without anachronism be treated as constituting a break from it.

Criticizing anthropomorphism is by no means to oppose polytheism. Moreover, it's not clear that Xenophanes is even being that critical of anthropomorphism; he merely seems to be saying that this is what people initially assume about the Gods, that it's natural to do so, but that if we accept that They are incorporeal then a lot of the anthropomorphism drops away as unnecessary. Moreover, to say that there is in some sense an intelligence shared by the Gods is no different ultimately than saying that the Gods agree on many things and perceive many things in the same way due to Their similar station. (In other words, objective idealism…)