greek · wisdom

Parmenides — Fragments (On Nature)

c. 500–450 BCE · Archaic Greece (early 5th century BCE) · Elea, Magna Graecia (present-day Velia, Italy)

The Proem — The Chariot Journey

1The mares that carry me as far as my heart could ever wish

2were bringing me along, when they brought me and set me on the far-famed road

3of the goddess, that carries the man of understanding through every town.

4There was I carried; there did the mares, well knowing, carry me,

5straining at the chariot; and maidens led the way.

6The Daughters of the Sun, leaving their House of Night, hastened forth to bring me to the light,

7pushing back with their hands the veils from their heads.

8There stand the gates of the paths of Night and Day,

9enclosed with a lintel above and a stone threshold beneath.

10The Maidens with soft words persuaded her wisely

11to push back for them the bolted bar without delay from the gates.

12And the goddess received me kindly, and took my right hand in hers,

13and spoke to me these words:

14"Welcome, O youth, that comest to my abode on the car that bears thee,

15tended by immortal charioteers.

16It is no ill chance, but right and justice, that has sent thee forth to travel on this way.

17Meet it is that thou shouldst learn all things,

18as well the unshaken heart of well-rounded truth,

19as the opinions of mortals in which is no true belief."

The Way of Truth

20Come now, I will tell thee — and do thou hearken to my saying and carry it away —

21the only two ways of search that can be thought of.

22The first, namely, that It is, and that it is impossible for it not to be,

23is the way of belief, for truth is its companion.

24The other, namely, that It is not, and that it must needs not be,—

25that, I tell thee, is a path that none can learn of at all.

26For thou canst not know what is not — that is impossible —

27nor utter it; for it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be.

28It needs must be that what can be thought and spoken of is;

29for it is possible for it to be, and it is not possible for what is nothing to be.

The Attributes of Being

30There remains, then, but one word by which to express the true road:

31Is. And on this road there are many signs that What is has no becoming and no perishing,

32for it is whole of limb, without motion, and without end.

33It never was, nor will be, for it is now, all at once,

34a continuous one.

35For what beginnings shouldst thou seek for it? How, and whence, should it have grown?

36I shall not let thee say nor think that it came from what is not;

37for it can neither be thought nor uttered that anything is not.

38And what need could have made it arise later rather than sooner, if it came from nothing?

39Wherefore, it must either altogether be or not be.

40Nor will the force of belief suffer that, beside what is,

41there could arise anything from what is not.

42For this reason, Justice does not loose her fetters and let anything come into being or pass away,

43but holds it fast.

Being is Complete

44Wherefore it is neither divisible, since it is all alike;

45and there is no more of it in one place than in another, to hinder it from holding together,

46nor less of it, but everything is full of what is.

47Wherefore all is continuous; for what is, is in contact with what is.

48Moreover, it is immovable in the bonds of mighty chains,

49without beginning and without end;

50since coming into being and passing away have been driven afar,

51and true belief has cast them away.

52It is the same, and it rests in the self-same place, abiding in itself.

53And thus it remaineth constant in its place.

The Sphere of Being

54Since, then, it has a furthest limit, it is complete on every side,

55like the mass of a rounded sphere,

56equally poised from the centre in every direction;

57for it cannot be greater or smaller in one place than in another.

58For there is nothing which is not that could keep it from reaching out equally,

59nor is it possible that there should be more of what is in this place and less in that,

60since it is all inviolable.

61For, since it is equal in all directions, it lies uniformly within its limits.

The Way of Opinion

62Here I shall close my trustworthy speech and thought about the truth.

63Henceforward learn the opinions of mortals,

64giving ear to the deceptive ordering of my words.

65Mortals have made up their minds to name two forms,

66one of which they should not name, and that is where they go astray from the truth.

67They have distinguished them as opposite in form,

68and have assigned to them marks distinct from one another.

69To the one they allot the fire of heaven, gentle, very light,

70in every direction the same as itself, but not the same as the other.

71The other, too, is by itself, and the opposite—

72dark night, a compact and heavy body.

73Of this I tell thee the whole arrangement as it seems likely.

notes

Parmenides of Elea (c. 515–450 BCE), founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy, wrote a single philosophical poem in Greek hexameter — the same metre as Homer and Hesiod — of which about 160 lines survive, preserved by later commentators (chiefly Sextus Empiricus and Simplicius). It is the earliest surviving continuous philosophical argument in the West. The poem is framed as a mystical journey: the young philosopher is carried in a chariot by immortal horses, guided by the Daughters of the Sun, past the gates of Day and Night to the presence of a nameless goddess, who reveals to him the truth about being. The mythic frame is an intentional counterpoint to the austere logical content that follows. The core doctrine is the earliest known argument by strict deduction in Western thought: what is, is; what is not, cannot even be thought; therefore whatever truly is must be ungenerated, imperishable, whole, unique, motionless, and complete — like the mass of a well-rounded sphere. All appearance of change, plurality, and coming-into-being is illusion (the "Way of Opinion"). Parmenides's argument set the fundamental problem that occupied Greek philosophy for the following century — how to reconcile the manifest fact of change with his rigorous demonstration that change is impossible. The atomism of Leucippus and Democritus, the pluralism of Empedocles, and much of Plato's theory of Forms are direct responses to Parmenides. Translation: John Burnet, "Early Greek Philosophy," 2nd edition, London: A. & C. Black, 1908. Public domain.

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