Parmenides was a Presocratic philosopher who lived in the southern Italian town of Elea (near the modern town of Agropoli). He was the first of a group of philosophers who are called Eleatics, the others being Zeno and Melissus.
He was born about 515 BC. Parmenides was a native of the Greek city of Elea, in southwest Italy, A member of a wealthy, influential family, he was said to have served Elea as a statesman lawgiver.
One of his teachers was supposedly the immigrant philosopher Xenophanes. Diogenes Laertius says that Parmenides was, at some time in his life associated with the Pythagoreans. Parmenides was known for having live an exemplary life and later Greeks talked on an ideal “Parmenidean life”. He founded a school of philosophy at Elam known as the Eleatic School.
Parmenides of Elea is the most brilliant and controversial of the Presocratic philosophers. Parmenides of Elea authored a notoriously obscure metaphysical poem that has earned him a reputation as the Presocratic period’s most profound and challenging thinker. He wrote a philosophical poem consisting of a prologue and two parts, of which considerable fragments have survived. The prologue describes Parmenides' meeting with a goddess who reveals the truth outlined in the first part of the poem; of the two possible paths of inquiry, It is and It is not.
Parmenides of Elea
