Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​Parmenides of Elea, son of Pyres, attended the lectures of Xenophanes (Theophrastus in his Epitome says that he heard Anaximander). Nevertheless, although he heard Xenophanes as well, he did not follow him. He also associated with Ameinias, son of Diochaitas, the Pythagorean, as Sotion said, a man poor indeed, but noble and good. Parmenides followed him even more, and when Ameinias died, Parmenides, being of illustrious birth and wealth, erected a hero-shrine for him; and it was by Ameinias, and not by Xenophanes, that he was converted to the life of tranquility. He was the first to declare that the earth is spherical and situated in the center. He also said that the elements are two, fire and earth, and that the former holds the rank of demiurge, while the latter holds that of matter.

​He also declared that the generation of men first came from the sun; and that the sun itself surpasses in the hot and the cold, out of which all things are composed. And soul and mind are the same, as Theophrastus also mentions in the Physical Opinions, when setting forth the doctrines of practically all thinkers. He also said that philosophy is twofold, one according to truth, and the other according to opinion. Hence he somewhere says: "And you must needs learn all things, both the unwavering heart of well-rounded Truth, and the opinions of mortals, in which there is no true conviction." He himself also philosophized through verses, just as Hesiod, Xenophanes, and Empedocles did. He pronounced reason to be the criterion, and stated that the senses are not accurate. At any rate he says: "Nor let habit of much experience force you along this way, to direct a wandering eye and an echoing ear and tongue, but judge by reason the contested refutation."

​Wherefore Timon also says concerning him: "And the might of high-minded Parmenides, not prone to fancy, who recovered thought from the deception of appearance." Plato also wrote the dialogue addressed to him, entitling it Parmenides, or On Ideas. He flourished in the sixty-ninth Olympiad. And he seems to have been the first to discover that Hesperus and Phosphorus are the same, as Favorinus says in the fifth book of the Memorabilia (though others attribute this to Pythagoras; but Callimachus says the poem is not his). It is also said that he established laws for the citizens, as Speusippus says in his On Philosophers; and that he was the first to pose the Achilles argument, as Favorinus says in his Miscellaneous History. There was also another Parmenides, a rhetorician who wrote a handbook of the art.