A New Fragment of Parmenides Author(s): F. M. Cornford Source: The Classical Review, Vol. 49, No. 4 (Sep., 1935), pp.

122-123 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/699664 . Accessed: 29/03/2011 05:38
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Legend: beautiful in part, but in large part obscene. The second stasimon (699-746) pursues the attack. It may be urged in defence of tales of horror that they serve as an aid to piety (743-4). Abat the latter place, since it is not Aegisthus' head only, but his whole corpse, that is afterwards brought in!

surd plea! The very episode of Atreus, Aerope and Thyestes, though so apt a parallel and so near to her in time and persons, had no effect whatever on Clytaemnestra; Legend convicts itself out of its own mouth. Not by this argument can these abominations be S. M. ADAMS. defended.
Trinitv College, Toronto.

A NEW FRAGMENT
% Plato, Theact. I80D 6M-yov 3' reXaO.6vY , a &XXot rCvavwria a7 &ope, 6rtL rovL'rots rei'vavro,
9e6b-

OF PARMENIDES.' at 6o-7rat (38). Plainly he did not connect 8, 38 with the verse in the Theaetetus. Why should he ? Since r7win 8, 38 means 'therefore,' the two verses have only two words in common: and ovo"ka. aLciKt7roV I deny all the assumptions. (I) There is no reason why Plato and Simplicius should not have found this verse in their texts of Parmenides. It is not meaningless. If we punctuate (with Diels at Simplic. Phys. 143, IO) it can be translated: 'It is sole, immovable. The All has the name " Being."' So Plato, and so Simplicius after him, must have understood it. If they found this line in Parmenides, they might well accept it as a line that Parmenides might have written. It is no odder than several verses now accepted without question. The sense is good and relevant. (2) Since the line has a meaning, there is no reason to suppose that Simlicius took it from Plato. He copied out nearly the whole of the Way of Truth, because (as he says) the book was rare; he reproduces many parts several times and discusses them in detail. Where he quotes our verse he does not refer to the Theaetetus. There is no ground for doubting that he found it in his text of Parmenides, which, if he used the copy in the library of the Academy, may well have been lineally descended from the copy in which Plato found it. (3) The Parmenides and the Sophist (close in date to the Theaetetus) prove that Plato had studied the poem very carefully. Probably he knew the Way of Truth (150 lines or so) by heart. I cannot believe that he produced a verse
t C 770V oTov, dKIcK 7EeVOe"L 7T- 7ra rl 6vo' eTVaL,

T7rav72 vop,' eTVLat otov dKKV77TOV "7() reOetP LaPevOLt Kal dXXa $o6a MLXo--ol TE KC i 1apuLevItaL VcLaVTL (the adherents of the Flux doctrine) rao't 7-roULLo W V E "T 7 KE V . . Kal ttLLXVPpiovratL, jS Vre7-rivrCC

Simplic.
z dK iV
T

Phys.

29,

15

J-Ort 6 U

Hcapepvi9
V

. ..

0 V

Clr7CaV14LVE

Ka'i

L6VO

s7TrVT-WP W

t otov c OKi'V770V reXELt r rav7- 6vop' eTvat. -U 7 tV V Simplic. Phys. 143, 8 857rt O ~ fIVXLK6,V 6 IIapeviqrl Xeyet, 3r7Xo- r6 a K Iv 77-0oaT6 a) CVCLat v OOWV
cKIVr70V 6vo1C' eTl"a

7-eXL6eL

7(

7TraTLi

(E,

7rci'v7r

aDF)

SOME editors rightly restore olov for olov, in accordance with the above contexts. But they deny to this verse an independent existence, on three assumptions : (I) that the verse, as it stands (with no important variants) in both Plato and Simplicius, could not have stood in their copies of Parmenides, because it is meaningless. This can be the only ground for assumption (2) that Simplicius, unperturbed by its meaninglessness, quoted the line from Plato, not from the original poem, which he had before him, and assumption (3) that Plato was here guilty of' the bad habit, common among the Neoplatonists, of arbitrarily completing ill-remembered single verses' (Diels on Parm. 8, 38). Plato is accused of concocting this verse by mangling and misquoting the very different line (8, 38) :
o'P'v yap
XXo rdpe?ro6ei6vros, 38 oiXov CiKiv7r6v /EVc6Lv7 7'
3

aret 7-6ye Motp' i~r~37qoev 7j) 7rv-riT(a) 6volk' orcat

elCvatL dXr0i,

V Ef07ro-raL

iooa L pporO

These lines were copied out by Simplicius at Phys. 146, 9 with their full context, and again at 86, 31, stopping
The Editors kindly allow me to supplement a footnote, proposing the restoration of this fragment, in Plato's Theory of Knowledge (London, 1935), p. 94.

'erotOrLEs 7E KGI 6XXvoOatL, K7-X. yIyVPoeTOal

KaT-7OEVT7O

THE CLASSICAL

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123

can be meaning 'It is sole, immovable. The 6vo/ta. The subject of OEXELt The only All has the name "Being "' out of the supplied with confidence. end and the beginning of two sentences person in Parmenides' system who could meaning ' Since Destiny has fettered it be willing, or unwilling, that the All so as to be whole and immovable: therefore should bear a name is logical Necessity, or all those things will be a (mere) name that 'AvdyK17 Moipa or a~tr]. The verse mortals have agreed upon,' etc. This can now be placed after frag. 19, which is not a case of 'arbitrarily completing stood at the end of the whole poem: a single ill-remembered verse.' It is 'Thus, according to belief, did these hard to conceive the mental process things come into being, and now exist, that could generate such a hybrid in and hereafter, having grown up, shall the most slovenly brain. Plato was not pass away. Men have agreed upon a slovenly, and he had a deep respect for name to distinguish each one.' A lame Parmenides. conclusion; would not the Goddess add: All the assumptions are groundless. 'But all these many names for changing The line should be recognized as a dis- things are misleading'? I propose: tinct fragment, quoted independently 70T KarT& &cav Uv7rci KaL vv acL oTC,, Kai 7 by Plato and Simplicius. But, as I d7rT7 TO0E TpcOrVTCa 3' 6vout' 6viOpowOL have suggested, the verse they found 7wrKlToV 7ros KTcLrGEOEVrT' KCTooTr. t < ro6WVoEv CVL LE -vov ydp 'AvyicyKq> ,'rior was probably already corrupt. ParTT" T 7K l oTovaKiVY-Tr6v OOEL3 7ravT 6vof EV . menides could conceivably write -7 'In all these names there is no (force of rravTt ovop' elvau, but would he want to 8&aS', that 'elvat ' was the name of the true) persuasion (cf. I, 30 po7ro&v say All ? The only suspicious word is 7e- Trai'obie 'vt 7Tlo'rt &, Xr70 ; 8, 12 7TrrlTo for Necessity is willing that the XOet,, which (according to Diels, Vors. ioX,;); All should Index) the Presocratics never use to movable.' only be called sole and immean ' is.' Empedocles uses TEXC'OeLv This makes a good ending. If we in (once) and KTEXEOEwv their proper suppose that in the text as known to sense 'to arise,' ' to grow '-an association that Parmenides would avoid in Plato and Simplicius the last clause was and corrected into ,to3vov yap speaking of his changeless Being. The corrupted avalcyl olov, iaKvc]TroV TEXE8e.7L 7TraV-T obvious correction ovoy, elvaL, we have the verse quoted L EL 7E 6VOj. ov CKiwLVr76V 0 76 rCaVT~ correctly and independently by both, Evat removes both objections, and yields the as Parmenides' last word on the unity and unchangeableness of Being. This incomplete sense: 'is willing that the hypothesis may be preferred to the All should be called sole and immovable.' tissue of ungrounded assumptions which If, as some suppose, Parmenides had Plato with incredible slovenliread Heracleitus, there might be a direct charge ness. allusion to frag. 32 EV '- a-ofov oLoivo v F. M. CORNFORD. X5 caao- o K IOEXE Kai eO'Xet Cambridge. Zoqrp
pLETT' TEXEUTOTOUiTL

NOTES
9OpKOS 7m tTreoTE-rc

ON PINDAR. rect the metre and the 'ghost word' of the Mss appeared. I would read

T7 t OL c'Xa'7 0KLMi) ?JCOV7VT

..

o K PiKOs

dpt07-pW0CV

0. 13,

98.

caXaes 7H /gOL 'eoprKO(is a vox nihili, and no reason'0' 6pKIov caa-rOa able sense of it can be got from 'The herald's voice will be a true guarThe new L. and S. takes it as E'dopdo. antee for me in confirmation.' an adj., but the meaning required is 'guarantee.' ' I suggest that the scribe's eye was 8' ev 7rrcipTr p~ r&v . . A. Xav, P. I, 77. and that caught by the & of f=rl"ovP-iKL, he began the line with d b' is against metre, and forces pKiovgo-aoErat, epao and seeing his error added 6r' above /1.kav into the acc., so that rat'at follow~oo-erat. Later arose to cor- ing has to do duty both for Salamis and b'popco'o