c485 PARMENIDES (c515-445 BCE) The most influential of the Pre-Socratic philosophers, a native of the Greek settlement of Elea [Hyele or Velia] in South Italy, Parmenides is founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy. He is the first philosopher to insist on a distinction between the world of appearances and that of true reality, that is of Being and Non-being. (12) Parmenides postulates a dual principle of life represented by contrasts such as light and darkness, the polarity of male and female or the contrasting elements of fire and water. From two such principles proceeds all things. Parmenides’ philosophies are the antithesis of those of Heraclitus [506 BCE] in that he believed that nothing essentially changed but rather matter just took on new and diverse forms.
THE ELEATICS are a trio of philosophers, Parmenides, Melissus and Zeno, from Elea, South Italy. They argued that reality is unbegotten, imperishable, a temporal, indivisible, motionless, and utterly changeless; the world as it appears is a misrepresentation of the truth. (12). Thus the theory of division between what is real and what is apparent to the senses becomes a topic of debate, the rational truth is now separated from sensory perception. The earlier Greek Ionian philosophy of material unity is shattered into the duality of static material substance and a life force. (19) This theory will lead to an exoteric belief in dual trends of naturalism and rationalism but from the esoteric perspective, all being had its counterpart of non-being.
c490 ZENO OF ELEA, born in Elea, Italy, he is a pre-Socratic philosopher of the Eleatic School. Little is known of his life, and little of his writing survives. Zeno attempted to defend his fellow philosopher Parmenides’ contentions that motion is impossible and that more than one thing cannot exist. He did this by devising “paradoxes” designed to show that the positions of his opponents (usually Pythagoreans) led to contradiction; he was the first to use the method of argument termed ‘Dialectic’ by Aristotle. (102)
Mask for Dionysos
c480 BCE AESCHYLUS (c525-456 BCE) together with Euripedes and Sophocles (c435 BCE) comprise a group of Greek tragedians. They employed ancient myth to gain understanding of the human condition through the application of a more critical temperament than the previous pagan thinking. With these Greek tragedians came the growth of mythic and ritualistic drama. (19)
c465 PERICLES (c495-429 BCE) Greek statesman and general represents the age of Athens at its cultural and political peak when Hellenic culture is balanced between ancient mythological tradition and modern secular rationalism. (19)
Pericles son of Xanthippus
