Vitae philosophorum

The generation of man proceeded from the sun as first cause; heat and cold, of which all things consist, surpass the sun itself. Again he held that soul and mind are one and the same, as Theophrastus mentions in his Physics, where he is setting forth the tenets of almost all the schools. He divided his philosophy into two parts dealing the one with truth, the other with opinion. Hence he somewhere says[*](Fr. 1. 28 D.):

Thou must needs learn all things, as well the unshakeable heart of well-rounded truth as the opinions of mortals in which there is no sure trust.[*](The text of Parmenides had suffered in the course of time. Here Laertius, like Sextus Empiricus and Plutarch, read εὐπειθέος ἀτρεκὲς; Proclus, two centuries later, εὐφεγγέος; but Simplicius, on De caelo, enables us to go behind our author by citing (as he no doubt would have wished to do) the better reading.)

Our philosopher too commits his doctrines to verse just as did Hesiod, Xenophanes and Empedocles. He made reason the standard and pronounced sensations to be inexact. At all events his words are[*](Fr. 1. 34 D.):

And let not long-practised wont force thee to tread this path, to be governed by an aimless eye, an echoing ear and a tongue, but do thou with understanding bring the muchcontested issue to decision.

Hence Timon[*](Fr. 44 D.) says of him[*](Cf.Od. xi. 601.):

And the strength of high-souled Parmenides, of no diverse opinions, who introduced thought instead of imagination’s deceit.

He flourished in the 69th Olympiad.[*](504-500 b.c.) He is believed to have been the first to detect the identity of Hesperus, the evening-star, and Phosphorus, the morning-star; so Favorinus in the fifth book of his Memorabilia; but others attribute this to Pythagoras, whereas Callimachus holds that the poem in question was not the work of Pythagoras. Parmenides is said to have served his native city as a legislator: so we learn from Speusippus in his book On Philosophers. Also to have been the first to use the argument known as Achilles [and the tortoise]: so Favorinus tells us in his Miscellaneous History.

There was also another Parmenides, a rhetorician who wrote a treatise on his art.

Melissus, the son of Ithaegenes, was a native of Samos. He was a pupil of Parmenides. Moreover he came into relations with Heraclitus, on which occasion the latter was introduced by him to the Ephesians, who did not know him,[*](Cf. supra, § 15.) as Democritus was to the citizens of Abdera by Hippocrates. He took part also in politics and won the approval of his countrymen, and for this reason he was elected admiral and won more admiration than ever through his own merit.

In his view the universe was unlimited, unchangeable and immovable, and was one, uniform

According to Apollodorus, he flourished in the 84th Olympiad.[*](444-440 b.c.)

Zeno was a citizen of Elea. Apollodorus in his Chronology says that he was the son of Teleutagoras by birth, but of Parmenides by adoption, while Parmenides was the son of Pyres. Of Zeno and Melissus Timon [*](Fr. 45 D.) speaks thus[*](Cf.Il.xxiii 827; v. 783.):

Great Zeno’s strength which, never known to fail,
1. On each side urged, on each side could prevail.
2. In marshalling arguments Melissus too,
3. More skilled than many a one, and matched by few.

Zeno, then, was all through a pupil of Parmenides and his bosom friend. He was tall in stature, as Plato says in his Parmenides.[*](127 b.) The same philosopher [mentions him] in his Sophist,[*](p. 216 a.) [and Phaedrus,][*](261 d.) and calls him the Eleatic Palamedes. Aristotle says that Zeno was the inventor of dialectic, as Empedocles was of rhetoric.