Listed 9 sub titles with search on: Biographies for destination: "ELEA Ancient city ITALY".
A Greek philosopher and poet, born of an illustrious family about B.C. 510, at Elea in Lower Italy. He was held in high esteem by his fellow-citizens on account of his excellent legislation, to which they ascribed the prosperity and wealth of the town; and also on account of his exemplary life. A "Parmenidean life" was proverbial among the Greeks. Little more is known of his biography than that he stopped at Athens on a journey in his sixty-fifth year, and there became acquainted with the youthful Socrates. He is the chief representative of the Eleatic philosophy. Like his great teacher, Xenophanes, he also formulated his philosophical views in a didactic poem, On Nature (Peri Phuseos), the form of which was considered inartistic. According to the proem, which has been preserved (while we only possess fragments of the rest), the work consisted of two divisions. The first treated of the truth, the second of the world of illusion; that is, the world of the senses and the erroneous opinions of mankind founded upon them. In his opinion truth lies in the perception that existence is, and error in the idea that non-existence also can be. Nothing can have real existence but what is conceivable; therefore to be imagined and to be able to exist are the same thing, and there is no development; the essence of what is conceivable is incapable of development, imperishable, immutable, unbounded, and indivisible; what is various and mutable, all development, is a delusive phantom; perception is thought directed to the pure essence of being; the phenomenal world is a delusion, and the opinions formed concerning it can only be improbable. The best edition of the fragments is that in Karsten's Philosophorum Graecorum Reliquiae.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
515 - 440
Parmenides was a Greek philosopher from Elea in southern Italy,
who founded the Eleatic School of Philosophy. He offered the view that the changing
world, visible to the senses, is too perishable and unstable to be ultimate reality.
In his principle work, a lengthy two-part verse composition, he held that the
multiplicity of existing things are but an appearance of a single eternal reality.
His doctrine of “all is one” contrasts with the opposite view of his
contemporary philosopher, Heraclitus, who maintained that “all is change”.
This text is cited July 2003 from the Hyperhistory Online URL below.
Presocratic philosopher whose work is best known to us in fragmentary
reports from other philosophers. Parmenides used sophisticated logical language
in the epic poem On Nature to argue that all of reality is a single,
unchanging substance. Everything is what it is -complete and immobile- and can
never become what it is not.
Followers of Parmenides included Zeno of Elea and other Eleatics.
This extract is cited Sept 2003 from the Philosophy Pages URL below, which contains image.
Philosopher, poet and greatest member of the Eleatic School.
Pamenides held that our surroundings do not really exist, they are
just illusion. Thus, any change or variety does not exist either. The true reality
can not be known by the senses but only by reason.
He stated that the Absolute Being exists but we cannot percieve it.
He also said that the true universe was a massive sphere of thinking in a resting
state.
One of Parmenides' disciples was Zeno, who also defended his teacher
through a series of paradoxes when the Greeks made fun of Parmenides' ideas.
This text is cited Sept 2003 from the In2Greece URL below.
Philosopher and mathematician from Elea in Italy.
He studied under Parmenides and followed his techer to Athens
when he was 40. There he became a teacher, and had several famous students, including
Pericles and Callias.
Later in life he was to return to Elea, where he is said to have tried
to overthrow the tyrant Nearchus. The plan failed, and Zeno was tortured, but
courageously gave no information.
Zeno worked out a series of paradoxes to demonstrate his ideas, including
the logical impossibility of motion and the illusority of the senses. In doing
this, he was called the inventor of dialectical reasoning by Aristotle. His best
known paradox is the one about Achilles and the turtle. According to Zenon, if
the two are put to race and the turtle is given some distance to start before
Achilles, there is no way Achilles can pass it as the turtle will move a little
while Achilles is running. By moving forward the turtle is always ahead, and so
it will be at least a tie.
This text is cited Sept 2003 from the In2Greece URL below.
Zenon. The Eleatic philosopher, a native of Elea (Velia) in Italy, son of Teleutagoras, and the favourite disciple of Parmenides. He was born about B.C. 488, and at the age of forty accompanied Parmenides to Athens. He appears to have resided some time at Athens, and is said to have unfolded his doctrines to men like Pericles and Callias for the price of 100 minae. Zeno is said to have taken part in the legislation of Parmenides, to the maintenance of which the citizens of Elea had pledged themselves every year by an oath. His love of freedom is shown by the courage with which he exposed his life in order to deliver his native country from a tyrant. Whether he perished in the attempt or survived the fall of the tyrant is a point on which the authorities vary. They also state the name of the tyranny differently. Zeno devoted all his energies to explain and develop the philosophical system of Parmenides.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
490 - 430
Various WebPages (see also Kitio, ancient city)
Aegimus or Aegimius (Aigimos, or Aigimios), one of the most ancient of the Greek physicians, who is said by Galen to have been the first person who wrote a treatise on the pulse. He was a native of Velia in Lucania, and is supposed to have lived before the time of Hippocrates, that is, in the fifth century before Christ. His work was entitled Peri Palmon, De Palpitationibus, (a name which alone sufficiently indicates its antiquity,) and is not now in existence. Callimachus (ap. Athen. xiv.) mentions an author named Aegimius, who wrote a work on the art of making cheesecakes (plakountopoukon sungramma, and Pliny mentions a person of the same name (H. N. vii. 49), who was said to have lived two hundred years; but whether these are the same or different individuals is quite uncertain.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Sep 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
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