Minima Parmenidea

1.	A Handclasp

Parm. B1.22-3a DK, ka€ me yeå prÒfrvn Íped°jato, xe›ra d¢ xeir€ ?/ dejiterØn ßlen …, ‘and the goddess received me in friendly fashion, and took my right hand with hers …’. What is the significance of this handclasp? Is the goddess merely welcoming her visitor? H. Roodenburg (1991, 152) writes that “in antiquity the handshake was widely known, though it was not the everyday gesture of greeting and leave-taking as we now know it”. Commentators on Parmenides pay little or no attention to the goddess’ gesture, with the exception of Hermann Diels, who quotes Homer’s lines describing Telemachus’ grasping of the stranger’s (i.e. Athena’s) hand and his promise that she will be well received.) The situation in Parmenides’ proem is different in that it is a goddess who takes a mortal guest by the hand and speaks. As a matter of fact, scenes of Heracles or Theseus shaking hands with Athena on archaic and classical vases represent “acceptance […] as an equal by the gods, and in particular […] comradeship with” the goddess. The late Hellenistic kings of Commagene are pictured shaking hands with Heracles on their reliefs; here “it is the monarch whose status is being enhanced”.)
The handclasp may be a pledge of good faith, or the formal confirmation of a promise, or an agreement, or even a treaty; the act often is but need not be followed by an oath, and the formula is frequently strengthened by the word p€stiw.) One can see why one of the Pythagorean akousmata runs ‘do not give your hand easily’.)
Some examples. Wily Antinous grasps Telemachus’ hand and promises help in his quest for his father;) the gesture clearly is intended to convince the other person that he is sincere, though he knows (as well as we, readers or listeners, do) that this promise is not made in good faith. Hera graps the hand of Hypnos, whom she wants to persuade (pe€yeu, she says) to make Zeus fall asleep.) Another interesting case is in Sophocles’ Ajax.) The seer Calchas approaches Teucer, places his right hand in friendly fashion in that of Teucer and speaks, imploring him to ensure that Ajax does not leave his hut the present day. Surely, the gesture is meant to help convince Teucer that what Calchas is going to tell him is both important and true.
I therefore believe that the goddess by pledging her good faith wants to convince her visitor (just as, in fact, the poet wants to guarantee his audience) that what is going to be said is both true and important, and that the poet wants his public to understand that his status has been enhanced.

2.	A Subject

Parm. B2.1-5 DK: eﬁ d' êg' §g∆n §r°v, kÒmisai d¢ sÁ mËyon ékoÊsaw, / a·per ıdo‹ moËnai dizÆsiÒw eﬁsi no∞sai: / ≤ m¢n ˜pvw ¶stin te ka‹ …w oÈk ¶sti mØ e‰nai, / PeiyoËw §sti k°leuyow,ÉAlhye€hi går Ùphde›: / [5] ≤ d' …w oÈk ¶stin te ka‹ …w xre≈n §sti mØ e‰nai. ‘Come now, I will tell you (and do you preserve my story when you have heard it), which ways of enquiry are the only ones to think about. The one, that it is and that it is impossible for it not to be, is the path of trust, for [this, sc. trust] attends upon truth; the other, that it is not and that it is necessary that it is not’.
One may feel certain that no agreement will ever be reached about the translation and interpretation of these difficult lines. I attempt to provide a cautiously literal rendering. One of the riddles which have plagued scholars is that of the subject of the verbal form ¶stin in line three and so of oÈk ¶stin in line five of the fragment. I refrain from giving an survey of those that have been proposed, and will suggest one that, as far as I know, has not been considered before, viz. that the subject is no∞sai from line two. This produces the following: ‘I will tell you [...] which ways of enquiry are the only ones to think about: (a) that (thinking) exists and that it is impossible that it does not exist, […] (b) that (thinking) does not exist and that it is necessary that it does not exist’. This ‘it’, viz. ‘thinking’, is also the subject of the negated infinitives (e‰nai both times) at the end of lines 3 and 5. But thinking that thinking does not exist and does so necessarily is self-contradictory, since one is still thinking this. The goddess consequently continues by stating, B2.6-8: ‘this, I tell you, is an entirely indiscernible path, for you could not know what is not (for this cannot be achieved), nor could you describe it’, tØn dÆ toi frãzv panapeuy°a ¶mmen étarpÒn: / oÎte går ín gno€hw tÒ ge mØ §Ún (oÈ går énustÒn) / oÎte frãsaiw.
	The vexed and vexing lines B6.1-2a should, I suggest, be punctuated in a different way than they always have been, viz. with a colon after gãr, a comma after ¶mmenai, and no comma after e‰nai, as follows: xrØ tÚ l°gein tÚ) noe›n t' §Ún ¶mmenai, ¶sti gãr: e‰nai / mhd¢n d' oÈk ¶stin. Then the translation is: ‘thinking-and-saying must be being [or: Being], for it exists; that it is nothing is not possible’. In defense of this suggestion one may point out that the first ¶sti here correspond with the first ¶stin (‘exists’) at B2.3, and the oÈk ¶stin here corresponds with the oÈk ¶stin (‘is impossible’) at B.2.3.
	B3 may be adduced now (by which I do not imply that I really know where in the first part of the poem this fragment should be placed). This is the famous incomplete line tÚ går aÈtÚ noe›n §st€n te ka‹ e‰nai, quoted by Clement  (for whom it may already have been part of a Wandercento) and Plotinus, both of whom beyond any doubt believe the meaning to be ‘thinking and being are the same’.) Recently this interpretation, which has long been out of favour,) has been strongly defended by Long) and Sedley). Long argues that ‘the same’ here means that “veridical thinking and reality are coextensive; thinking is the life or heart of Being, and being characterizes the ontological and veridical status of thinking”; he is even willing to think of Being in hylozoistic or, if you wish, Plotinian terms.)
	The lines B8.34-6a can also be translated in a simple way based on the above proposal that no∞sai is the subject both of the first ¶stin B2.3 and of the first ¶stin B2.5. The text runs taÈtÚn d' §st‹ noe›n te ka‹ oÏneken ¶sti nÒhma: / oÈ går êneu toË §Òntow, §n œi pefatism°non §stin, / eÍrÆseiw tÚ noe›n. Translate: ‘thinking is the same as that thought exists; for not without Being, in which it exists as spoken, will you find thinking’.
	In fact fragment B8.1-49, the ‘tale of the way that it exists’, is itself a demonstration of the sameness of speaking (or telling), thinking, and Being. Thinking is the process which brings us progressively from one characteristic of Being to the other, and it coincides with the telling of this tale—the tale, precisely, of the Being in which it exists as spoken. Quite circular. I suggest that B5, ‘to me from wherever I start is shared, for I shall come back there again’ (junÚn d¢ mo€ §stin, ıppÒyen êrjvmai: tÒyi går pãlin ·jomai aÔyiw) pertains to precisely this circularity.

3.	A Way

One of the more disturbing problems in the interpretation of Parmenides is the question whether two or three so-called ‘ways’ are distinguished in fragments B6 and B7. The assumption that there are only two such ways, according to some of those who hold this view, means that the way ‘that it is not and that it is necessary that it is not’ of B2.5-7 coincides with the way of mortals at B5.4-9, that is to say with the world according to the opinions of humans which is announced in the proem, B1.30-2, and described in the second part of the poem, beginning at B8.50.)
Part of this argument is concerned with the lacuna at the end of B6.3, where Diels (followed by many) added <e‡rgv>; the line may then be translated ‘this is the first way of enquiry from which I keep you’. This is then followed at lines 4-5 by ‘and subsequently (I keep you) from the one on which humans roam’ etc. So there should be two ways one should avoid. Diels’ conjecture was accepted by Tarán, who however postulated a substantial lacuna between lines three and four.) Cordero replaced Diels’ <e‡rgv> by <êrjei> and preferred the t’ of some mss. of Simplicius earlier in the line to the s’ of others among these mss., translating “car tu commenceras par ce premier chemin de la recherche”.) Nehamas keeps s’ which he interprets as soi not se, and inserts <êrjv> in the lacuna, which gives ‘for first I shall begin for you from this first route of inquiry’.) The Cordero-Nehamas line 3 is then followed at lines 4-5 by ‘and subsequently (I begin) for you from the one on which humans roam’ etc. Curd accepts this, finding Nehamas’ intervention “slightly preferable” to that of Cordero.)
But there is a snag. Of the way and the opinions of mortals, that is to say of the cosmogony, cosmology, astronomy, human biology etc. of the second part of the poem, sadly mutilated though it is, enough survives in verbatim lines alone to show that a quite complete account was provided, comparable to the kind of treatise which later received the designation On Nature, or the title Timaeus. Now the goddess, that is to say the poet, tells us at B 2.6 that the way ‘that it is not and that it is necessary that it is not’ is a path that is ‘entirely indiscernible’ (panapeuyÆw), or (as Ms Curd translates)) “wholly without report”. I fail to see in what way this epithet should be applicable to the detailed report on the opinions of humans. These are said to be ‘without true trust’ at B 1.30, not without trust at all—and even a total absence of trust, or trustworthiness, is not equivalent to being entirely beyond reach from a cognitive point of view. Plumping for the varia lectio panapeiy°a does not help either, since ‘wholly without trustworthiness’ is not the same as ‘without true trust’ either. What is more, the entirely uncontroversial reference to the decision taken in B2 about the way ‘that it is not’ (B8.16, oÈk ¶stin) at B8.17 characterizes it as ‘nameless’ (én≈numow). But the world ‘according to opinion’ (B19.1, katå dÒjan) is not ‘nameless’. Quite the opposite, for humans ‘name’ things: B8.38, ˆnom(a) ¶stai or ÙnÒmastai; B8.53, Ùnomãzein; B9.1, ÙnÒmastai; B 19.3, presumably the last line of the poem, to›w d' ˆnom' ênyrvpoi kat°yent' §p€shmon •kãstvi.
Accordingly, whatever the correct emendation and interpretation of the first three lines of B6 may be, the identification of the way of mortals with the second of the two ways outlined in B2 should in my view be rejected. One can only agree with Giannantoni’s point that the way ‘that it is not’ is not that of the second part of the poem, because “la dÒja … non sola è qualcosa di esprimibile …, ma e qualcosa che, sebbene priva di p€stiw élhyÆw, deve tuttavia essere appresa” in the manner announced at B1.31-2.) And if the punctuation and interpretation of B6.1-2 e‰nai / mhd¢n d' oÈk ¶stin, ‘it (viz., thinking and speaking) cannot be nothing’, is accepted, these five words clearly refer to the second way of B2. Then, naturally, the way described B6.4 ff. (aÈtår ¶peit' ktl.) will be different from the way referred to at B6.3. Note that on the Cordero/Nehamas/Curd interpetation, too, the way of B6.3 is of course different from that of B6.4 ff. The word aÈtãr, ‘but’, is telling.

4.	Changing Place and Colour

At B8.38-41 we are informed about ‘names which mortals have laid down, trusting them to be true: coming to be and passing away, being as well as not-being, and changing place and altering bright colour’, g€gnesya€ te ka‹ ˆllusyai, e‰na€ te ka‹ oÈx€, / ka‹ tÒpon éllãssein diã te xrÒa fanÚn éme€bein (40-1). I wonder what the objects are to which the ‘names’ in the last couple of lines should apply.
The ‘names’ ‘coming to be’ and ‘passing away’ listed in line 40 pertain to processes which earlier in the fragment (B8.6-14) have been proved to be invalid for Being. As to the other ‘names’ mentioned in this line, to assume ‘being’ as well as ‘not-being’ is of course forbidden by the argument of B2 and those sections later in the poem which rely on this argument. These supremely important ‘names’ laid down by humans deny the validity of the gist of Parmenides’ grand thesis. Naturally one can say that the names ‘change of place’ and ‘altering of bright colour’, which flout the rejection of motion and change argued at B8.29-30, pertain to things in the world in general. True enough. I for my part suspect, but cannot prove, that the goddess (speaking for the poet) is first of all thinking of the heavenly bodies, and of the elements ‘light’, or ‘aetherial fire’, and ‘night’ which play so fundamental a part in the second part of the poem. Coxon points out that “fanÒn alludes to P.’s view that light is one of the two constituents of them all [i.e. physical things in general] (fr. 11), so that a change in a thing’s brightness may reflect a change in its general state”.) But night too is “one of the two constituents of them all”. Both elements should be included.
tÒpon éllãssein in fact means ‘changing places’. diã xrÒa fanÚn éme€bein means ‘alter their bright aspect to dark and from dark to bright’, as Coxon translates). We may think of the moon and the stars changing places with the sun, of the difference in the colour of the sky during the day as compared with the night, or of the spectacular phenomena of for instance a Mediterranean sunset.) There is abundant evidence for Parmenides’ interest in colourful or less colourfull heavenly phenomena. In a verbatim fragment he speaks of the ‘destructive deeds of the pure torch of brilliant Sun’ and of the ‘circumambient deeds of round-faced Moon’ (B9.2-4). He is the first to state that the light of the moon is derived from the sun,) i.e. in the colourful lines B14 and B15, which cannot have been far apart in the original text: ‘an alien light, shining brightly in the night, wandering about the earth’ (B14), ‘always looking for the rays of the sun’.
People believe that what they see every day and night is real; they even believe that the moon shines with its own light. They are doubly wrong.*

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Utrecht University, Department of Philosophy		              Jaap Mansfeld
Jaap.Mansfeld@phil.uu.nl