Parmenides was a Greek philosopher and poet, born of an illustrious family about BCE. 510, at Elea in Lower Italy, and is is the chief representative of the Eleatic philosophy. He was held in high esteem by his fellowcitizens for his excellent legislation, to which they ascribed the prosperity and wealth of the town. He was also admired for his exemplary life. A “Parmenidean life” was proverbial among the Greeks. He is commonly represented as a disciple of Xenophanes. Parmenides wrote after Heraclitus, and in conscious opposition to him, given the evident allusion to Hericlitus: “for whom it is and is not, the same and not the same, and all things travel in opposite directions” fr. 6, 8. Little more is known of his biography than that he stopped at Athens on a journey in his sixtyfifth year, and there became acquainted with the youthful Socrates. That must have been in the middle of the fifth century BCE., or shortly after it.

Website: http://www.iep.utm.edu/parmenid/