Note 424 — Chapter IV · PARMENIDES OF ELEA

Plato, Parm. 127 b (R. P. 111 d). There are, as Zeller has shown, a certain number of anachronisms in Plato, but there is not one of this character. In the first place, we have exact figures as to the ages of Parmenides and Zeno, which imply that the latter was twenty-five years younger than the former, not forty as Apollodoros said. In the second place, Plato refers to this meeting in two other places (Tht. 183 e 7 and Soph. 217 c 5), which do not seem to be mere references to the dialogue entitled Parmenides. No parallel can be quoted for an anachronism so glaring and deliberate as this would be. E. Meyer (Gesch. des Alterth. iv. § 509, Anm.) also regards the meeting of Sokrates and Parmenides as historical.