Note 548 — Chapter LXVII · THE DRAMA. — RHETORIC AND DIALECTICS. — THE SOPHISTS.

Compare Plutarch, Periklês, c. 3; Plato, Parmenidês, pp. 126, 127; Plato, Alkibiad. i. ch. 14, p. 119, A.

That Sokratês had in his youth conversed with Parmenidês, when the latter was an old man, is stated by Plato more than once, over and above his dialogue called Parmenidês, which professes to give a conversation between the two, as well as with Zeno. I agree with Mr. Fynes Clinton, Brandis, and Karsten, in thinking that this is better evidence, about the date of Parmenidês than any of the vague indications which appear to contradict it, in Diogenes Laërtius and elsewhere. But it will be hardly proper to place the conversation between Parmenidês and Sokratês—as Mr. Clinton places it, Fast. H. vol. ii, App. c. 21, p. 364—at a time when Sokratês was only fifteen years of age. The ideas which the ancients had about youthful propriety, would not permit him to take part in conversation with an eminent philosopher at so early an age as fifteen, when he would not yet be entered on the roll of citizens, or be qualified for the smallest function, military or civil. I cannot but think that Sokratês must have been more than twenty years of age when he thus conversed with Parmenidês.

Sokratês was born in 469 B.C. (perhaps 468 B.C.); he would therefore be twenty years of age in 449: assuming the visit of Parmenidês to Athens to have been in 448 B.C., since he was then sixty-five years of age, he would be born in 513 B.C. It is objected that, if this date be admitted, Parmenidês could not have been a pupil of Xenophanês: we should thus he compelled to admit, which perhaps is the truth, that he learned the doctrine of Xenophanês at second-hand.