SOURCE: G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, M. Schofield, "Parmenides of Elea," in The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History, second edition, Cambridge University Press, 1983, pp. 239-62.

In the following excerpt, originally published in a different form in 1957, Kirk, Raven, and Schofield attempt to explicate Parmenides's poem, portions of which they deem to be of "ineradicable obscurity. " Greek words that were originally included in this essay have been omitted.

Parmenides' Hexameter Poem

Parmenides is credited with a single 'treatise' (Diog. L. 1, 16, DK 28A 13).¹ Substantial fragments of this work, a hexameter poem, survive, thanks largely to Sextus Empiricus (who preserved the proem) and Simplicius (who transcribed further extracts into his commentaries on Aristotle's de caelo and Physics 'because of the scarceness of the treatise'). Ancients and moderns alike are agreed upon a low estimation of Parmenides' gifts as a writer. He has little facility in diction, and the struggle to...