[849]. Plato, Soph. 248 a 4.
[850]. See Diels, Elementum, pp. 16 sqq. Parmenides had already called the original Pythagorean “elements” μορφαί ([§ 91]), and Philistion called the “elements” of Empedokles ἰδέαι. If the ascription of this terminology to the Pythagoreans is correct, we may say that the Pythagorean “forms” developed into the atoms of Leukippos and Demokritos on the one hand ([§ 174]), and into the “ideas” of Plato on the other.
CHAPTER VIII
THE YOUNGER ELEATICS
Relation to predecessors.
154. The systems we have just been studying were all fundamentally pluralist, and they were so because Parmenides had shown that, if we take a corporeal monism seriously, we must ascribe to reality a number of predicates which are inconsistent with our experience of a world which everywhere displays multiplicity, motion, and change ([§ 97]). The four “roots” of Empedokles and the innumerable “seeds” of Anaxagoras were both of them conscious attempts to solve the problem which Parmenides had raised (§§ 106, 127). There is no evidence, indeed, that the Pythagoreans were directly influenced by Parmenides, but it has been shown ([§ 147]) how the later form of their system was based on the theory of Empedokles. Now it was just this prevailing pluralism that Zeno criticised from the Eleatic standpoint; and his arguments were especially directed against Pythagoreanism. Melissos, too, criticises Pythagoreanism; but he tries to find a common ground with his adversaries by maintaining the old Ionian thesis that reality is infinite.
I. Zeno of Elea
Life.
155. According to Apollodoros,[[851]] Zeno flourished in Ol. LXXIX. (464-460 B.C.). This date is arrived at by making him forty years younger than his master Parmenides. We have seen already ([§ 84]) that the meeting of Parmenides and Zeno with the young Sokrates cannot well have occurred before 449 B.C., and Plato tells us that Zeno was at that time “nearly forty years old.”[[852]] He must, then, have been born about 489 B.C., some twenty-five years after Parmenides. He was the son of Teleutagoras, and the statement of Apollodoros that he had been adopted by Parmenides is only a misunderstanding of an expression of Plato’s Sophist.[[853]] He was, Plato further tells us,[[854]] tall and of a graceful appearance.
Like Parmenides and most other early philosophers, Zeno seems to have played a part in the politics of his native city. Strabo ascribes to him some share of the credit for the good government of Elea, and says that he was a Pythagorean.[[855]] This statement can easily be explained. Parmenides, we have seen, was originally a Pythagorean, and the school of Elea was no doubt popularly regarded as a mere branch of the larger society. We hear also that Zeno conspired against a tyrant, whose name is differently given, and the story of his courage under torture is often repeated, though with varying details.[[856]]