In all texts of the fragments of Parmenides printed in the last fifty years he begins his poem by speaking of ‘the way which’ (or, according to some, ‘the goddess who’) ‘carries through all towns the man who knows’ (). The more percipient critics have realized that is difficult or impossible to defend, for it makes no good sense and is incompatible with 1. 27, according to which the way is . In fact , which is alleged to be the reading of the best manuscript of Sextus' books Adversus Dogmaticos, has no manuscript authority at all.