ELEATISM. - The philosophy of the school of Elea (a city of Magna Graecia, now Velia-Scavi, a station on the Naples-Reggio line) which includes XENOPHANES, PARMENIDES, ZENO, MELISSUS.
XENOPHANES OF COLOPHON, b. c. 570, d. 478 B.C., banished from his homeland, traveled as a wandering poet through Sicily and southern Italy, finally settling in Elea. In the most notable of the elegiac fragments that have come down to us, he ridicules the doctrine of metempsychosis, affirms the need for wisdom over prevailing athleticism, condemns the introduction of Lydian luxury into Colophon, and recommends the moderate enjoyment of social pleasures.
Of his epic fragments, the most important are those in which he attacks the anthropomorphic polytheism of his contemporaries. "There is one God... who is in no way like mortals, neither in form nor in thought; he is all eye, all ear, all mind" (οὐλός ὀρφῆς, οὔλως δὲ νοετός, οὔλως δὲ τάξουμε), and without effort governs all things with his mind (νόσον φανεῖ). Men have falsely conceived the gods in their own image and likeness, particularly as Homer, who attributed to the gods what is shameful and blameworthy—stealing, adultery, mutual deception. It remains uncertain whether Xenophanes' conception of God should be understood in a monotheistic or pantheistic sense.
PARMENIDES OF ELEA, b. c. 530, d. 444 B.C., of noble family, a statesman and lawgiver, was influenced by the teachings of Xenophanes and transformed his theology into a rigorously monistic metaphysics.
Of the 163 hexameters that have come down to us—some incomplete and a few only in Latin translation—more than two-thirds deal with truth, that is, with the unchanging One, in which reality and thought are identified; the remaining third treats of opinion, of mutable appearance. The first part is by far the most important. Being is complete (οὐλός), unique in kind (μονογενές), without beginning or end (ἀνάρχος, ἀτέλευτός), neither was nor will be but is now (οὔτε γὰρ ἦν οὔτ' ἔσται, ἅτε δ' ἐόντος ἐόν), at every instant all at once, a continuous unity (συνεχές).