Besides all this, it is certain that Parmenides went on to describe how the other gods were born and how they fell, an idea which we know to be Orphic, and which may well have been Pythagorean. We shall come to it again in Empedokles. In Plato's Symposium, Agathon couples Parmenides with Hesiod as a narrator of ancient deeds of violence committed by the gods.[1] If Parmenides was expounding the Pythagorean theology, this is just what we should expect; but it seems hopeless to explain it on any of the other theories which have been advanced on the purpose of the Way of Belief.[2] Such things belong to theological speculation, and not to the beliefs of "the many." Still less can we think it probable that Parmenides made up these stories himself to show what the popular view of the world really implied if properly formulated. We must ask, I think, that any theory shall account for what was evidently no inconsiderable portion of the poem.
95.Physiology. In describing the views of his contemporaries, Parmenides was obliged, as we see from the fragments, to say a good deal about physiological matters. Like everything else, man was composed of the warm and the cold, and death was caused by the removal of the warm. Some curious views with regard to generation were also stated. In the first place, males came from the right side and females from the left. Women had more of the warm and men of the cold, a view we shall find Empedokles contradicting.[3] It is the proportion of the warm and cold in men that deter-
- ↑ Plato, Symp. 195 c 1. It is implied that these παλαιὰ πράγματα were πολλὰ καὶ βίαια, including ἐκτομαί and δεσμοί. The Epicurean criticism of this is partially preserved in Philodemos, De pietate, p. 68, Gomperz; and Cicero, De nat. d. i. 28 (Dox. p. 534; R. P. 126 b).
- ↑ For these theories, see § 90.
- ↑ For all this, see R. P. 127 a, with Arist. De part. an. B, 2. 648 a 28; De gen. an. Δ, I. 765 b 19.
remarkable confirmation of the view that the Δόξα of Parmenides was Pythagorean. If, as Achilles says, the poet Ibykos of Rhegion had anticipated Parmenides in announcing this discovery, that is to be explained by the fact that Rhegion became for a time, as we shall see, the chief seat of the Pythagorean school.
