Parmenides and Er

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore the suggestion that Parmenides's poem, or at any rate some of it, has light to throw on the difficulties of the myth of Er in the Republic. Parmenides descends to the underworld as a shaman-poet in search of knowledge, Er goes there by the fortuitous circumstance of his death-like trance; but both katabaseis share a common setting, and in both the hero is shown a glimpse of the real shape and mechanism of the universe. In the case of Parmenides the exhibit is two-fold, both ‘the unshakeable heart of rounded truth’ and ‘the opinions of men in which there is no true belief’. Interest has been mainly concentrated on the former, metaphysical, section, from which the greater part of our fragments derive; but the latter contained, in the system of stephanai, an account of the appearance of the universe, which is interesting, both on its own account and in view of the light it throws on the difficulties of Er's myth. I shall consider first (I) the setting of Parmenides's poem as it appears in the opening lines, then (II) propose an interpretation of the system of stephanai, and (III) seek support for some of its main features in the general tradition of cosmological speculation from Homer downwards. Finally (IV), I shall proceed to examine the myth of Er and offer an interpretation of some of its difficulties which will take account of this body of earlier thought.