brothers the purpose of our visit, he saluted me as an old acquaintance,
and we asked him to repeat the dialogue. At first, he complained of the
trouble, but he soon consented. He told us that Pythodorus had described
to him the appearance of Parmenides and Zeno; they had come to Athens at
the great Panathenaea, the former being at the time about sixty-five years
old, aged but well-favoured--Zeno, who was said to have been beloved of
Parmenides in the days of his youth, about forty, and very good-looking:--
that they lodged with Pythodorus at the Ceramicus outside the wall, whither
Socrates, then a very young man, came to see them: Zeno was reading one of
his theses, which he had nearly finished, when Pythodorus entered with
Parmenides and Aristoteles, who was afterwards one of the Thirty. When the
recitation was completed, Socrates requested that the first thesis of the
treatise might be read again.'

'You mean, Zeno,' said Socrates, 'to argue that being, if it is many, must
be both like and unlike, which is a contradiction; and each division of
your argument is intended to elicit a similar absurdity, which may be
supposed to follow from the assumption that being is many.' 'Such is my
meaning.' 'I see,' said Socrates, turning to Parmenides, 'that Zeno is
your second self in his writings too; you prove admirably that the all is
one: he gives proofs no less convincing that the many are nought. To
deceive the world by saying the same thing in entirely different forms, is
a strain of art beyond most of us.' 'Yes, Socrates,' said Zeno; 'but
though you are as keen as a Spartan hound, you do not quite catch the
motive of the piece, which was only intended to protect Parmenides against
ridicule by showing that the hypothesis of the existence of the many
involved greater absurdities than the hypothesis of the one. The book was
a youthful composition of mine, which was stolen from me, and therefore I
had no choice about the publication.' 'I quite believe you,' said
Socrates; 'but will you answer me a question? I should like to know,