Note 1 — Chapter XXVII · PARMENIDES.
Reading edition
This dramatic introduction is extremely complicated. The whole dialogue, from beginning to end, is recounted by Kephalus of Klazomenæ; who heard it from the Athenian Antiphon — who himself had heard it from Pythodôrus, a friend of Zeno, present when the conversation was held. A string of circumstances are narrated by Kephalus, to explain how he came to wish to hear it, and to find out Antiphon. Plato appears anxious to throw the event back as far as possible into the past, in order to justify the bringing Sokrates into personal communication with Parmenides: for some unfriendly critics tried to make out that the two could not possibly have conversed on philosophy (Athenæus, xi. 505). Plato declares the ages of the persons with remarkable exactness: Parmenides was 65, completely grey-headed, but of noble mien: Zeno about 40, tall and graceful: Sokrates very young. (Plat. Parmen. p. 127 B-C.)
It required some invention in Plato to provide a narrator, suitable for recounting events so long antecedent as the young period of Sokrates.