¹ It was Wilhelm, Nestle, Die Presokratiker, in Auswahl übersetztGoogle Scholar. Eugen Diederichs, Jena 1908. I have since translated B 14–15 (Mondgottin und Sonnengott): Leuchtend bei Nacht von dem Licht, das er schenkt, / so umirrt sie die Erde. // Immerzu blickt sie gebannt / hin auf den strahlenden Gott.

² I do not see why the goddess is usually regarded as anonymous. It must be Δίκη (Justice), although Parmenides could have made this clearer. But why should A Δίκη, if she is merely a turnkey for a higher goddess, have so much fuss made about her by the Heliads, and be described by a fear-inspiring epithet? I cannot believe that it was Parmenides' intention to inform us that he passed her without exchanging a word with her, the divine turn-key, in order to be taken by the hand at once in friendly fashion by a higher goddess, and welcomed? Is it not more probable that he was not an experienced writer and did not realize that we would want an explicit identification (although there was not a syllable in his text to make us suspect that there could be more than one goddess on his stage)? Incidentally, I remember having written about this before, and I must apologize that I cannot remember the place (I am in my 90th year). But if any reader wishes to see older passages of mine about Parmenides, I can recommend my Conjectures and Refutations, 1963, 1989⁵; see there the Index of Names.

³ DK B 10 contains an extract, perhaps too brief, from Plutarch's Moralia, 1114a.

⁴ The old pre-Aristotelian formal proof was, it seems, mainly the indirect proof, the ἒλεγχος. Parmenides mentions it by name in B 7, 5. It is good that there can be no doubt about its meaning, as it derives from έλέγχω (to ‘disgrace’, ‘scorn’, ‘dishonour’; in this case, to dishonour an assertion).

⁵ Parmenides speaks therefore of the round-eyed (κύκλωπος) Selene B 10,4. He clearly knew that she was always half lit up.

⁶ See DK 22 A 1, p. 142, 2–6. Diogenes Laertius 9.10: eclipses of the sun and of the moon occur when the bowls (that contain the burning fuel) are turned upwards; the phases of the moon occur when the bowl rotates, little by little, in its place.

⁷ I have tried in my translation to be as close to the text as is compatible with the use of clear English. The deviations of Parmenides from ordinary Greek have been sufficiently discussed elsewhere, by many scholars, and I do not believe that his meaning is in any doubt. Concerning the proof in 6 steps (preceding the quotation which refers only to the first establishment of the premise(s)), these steps extend, very repetitively, over the whole Way of Truth – apart from the fact that Parmenides does not consider the possibility that his total cosmic sphere may rotate (a possibility which would not have impressed him since his sphere was ‘immovable and unchangeable in the bounds of mighty chains’: B 8, 26–7). At any rate, his intuitive proof seems to me (not valid but) intuitively in order: within his logic, which seems intuitively to work, there is no obviously invalid step; and the premise ‘what exists, exists’, or ‘what is, is’ seems to be a tautology; which would turn the valid derivation into a valid proof.

⁸ Karl, Reinhardt, Parmenides und die Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie (Frankfurt am Main, 1916,¹ 1959 ²), p. 26Google Scholar; see also my Conjectures and Refutations, pp. 11f.).Google Scholar

⁹ Karl Reinhardt, op. cit., especially pp. 77f.

¹⁰ The ‘doubleheads’ (or the ‘two-headed’ ones) in B 6 create a problem. The expression is certainly used in anger, like ‘blockhead’. But has it a special meaning, at least one like blockhead? And perhaps even a meaning that links it with the argument? Or are they just ordinary mortals looking Janus-faced towards being and towards not-being?

¹¹ See above, note 7. The problem of paradoxes – simple inferences which, it seems, cannot be intuitively shown to contain a mistake, but which lead to impossible conclusions – was known in antiquity and has not left us. The most famous one is the Epimenides (a form of the Liar).

* This paper is dedicated in gratitude to Jaap Mansfield for his book Die Offenbarung des Parmenides und die menschliche Welt, Assen 1964. Mansfield has also encouraged me to add the following note on Parmenides' conventionalist attitude towards language, although the note is unconnected with my argument.

A child born blind may know very little about its being disabled (especially in a society in which no fuss is made about it). But it may exhibit an unusual attitude towards language, similar to that of Parmenides. For it will by example and convention learn to adopt, and to use, words that mean little or nothing to it (like ‘blind’, ‘see’; ‘green’, ‘red’; ‘dark’, ‘light’…). Parmenides was clearly not blind: he was an astronomer! But he may have been brought up by (or with) someone who was. Or he may have been colour-blind, which may lead to a similar attitude (as Dr. Noel Bradley, a psychotherapist, informs me).