Editing Parmenides (section)

==== Date of birth ====
All conjectures regarding Parmenides's date of birth are based on two ancient sources. One comes from [[Apollodorus of Athens|Apollodorus]] and is transmitted to us by Diogenes Laertius: this source marks the [[Olympiad]] 69th (between 504 BC and 500 BC) as the moment of maturity, placing his birth 40 years earlier (544 BC – 540 BC).<ref>Diogenes Laertius, IX, 23 (DK testimony A 1).</ref> The other is [[Plato]], in his dialogue ''[[Parmenides (dialogue)|Parmenides]]''. There Plato composes a situation in which Parmenides, 65, and [[Zeno of Elea|Zeno]], 40, travel to [[Ancient Athens|Athens]] to attend the [[Panathenaic Games]]. On that occasion they meet [[Socrates]], who was still very young according to the Platonic text.<ref>Plato, ''Parmenides'' 127 BC (A 5).</ref>
[[File:Greek vase with runners at the panathenaic games 530 bC.jpg|thumb|200px|Greek vase with runners at the panathenaic games, {{circa|530 BC}}. In Plato's [fictional] dialogue, Parmenides and Zeno debate a young Socrates during these games {{circa|450 BC}}]]
The inaccuracy of the dating from Apollodorus is well known, who chooses the date of a historical event to make it coincide with the maturity (the ''[[floruit]]'') of a philosopher, a maturity that he invariably reached at forty years of age. He tries to always match the maturity of a philosopher with the birth of his alleged disciple. In this case Apollodorus, according to [[John Burnet (classicist)|Burnet]], based his date of the foundation of Elea (540 BC) to chronologically locate the maturity of [[Xenophanes]] and thus the birth of his supposed disciple, Parmenides.<ref name="Burnet169">Burnet, ''Early Greek Philosophy'', pp. 169ff.</ref> Knowing this, Burnet and later classicists like [[Francis Macdonald Cornford|Cornford]], [[John Raven|Raven]], [[William Keith Chambers Guthrie|Guthrie]], and [[Malcolm Schofield|Schofield]] preferred to base the calculations on the Platonic dialogue. According to the latter, the fact that Plato adds so much detail regarding ages in his text is a sign that he writes with chronological precision. Plato says that Socrates was very young, and this is interpreted to mean that he was less than twenty years old. We know the year of Socrates's death (399 BC) and his age—he was about seventy years old—making the date of his birth 469 BC. The Panathenaic games were held every four years, and of those held during Socrates's youth (454, 450, 446), the most likely is that of 450 BC, when Socrates was nineteen years old. Thus, if at this meeting Parmenides was about sixty-five years old, his birth occurred around 515 BC.<ref name="Burnet169" /><ref name="Corn1">Cornford, ''Plato and Parmenides'', p. 1.</ref><ref name="guth15">Guthrie, ''History of Greek Philosophy'', II, p. 15ff.</ref><ref>Raven, ''The Presocratic Philosophers'', p. 370.</ref><ref>Schofield, ''The Presocratic Philosophers'', p. 347.</ref><ref>Plato, ''Parmenides'' (ed. Degrees), p. 33, note 13</ref><ref name="Cor2023">Cordero, ''Siendo se es'', pp. 20-23</ref>

However, neither Raven nor Schofield, who follows the former, finds a dating based on a late Platonic dialogue entirely satisfactory. Other scholars directly prefer not to use the Platonic testimony and propose other dates. According to a scholar of the [[Platonic dialogues]], R. Hirzel, [[:es:Conrado Eggers Lan|Conrado Eggers Lan]] indicates that the historical has no value for Plato.<ref>R. Hirzel, ''Der Dialog'', I, p. 185.</ref> The fact that the meeting between Socrates and Parmenides is mentioned in the dialogues ''Theaetetus'' (183e) and ''Sophist'' (217c) only indicates that it is referring to the same fictional event, and this is possible because both the ''Theaetetus'' and the ''Sophist'' are considered after the ''Parmenides''. In ''Soph.'' 217c the [[dialectic]] procedure of Socrates is attributed to Parmenides, which would confirm that this is nothing more than a reference to the fictitious dramatic situation of the dialogue.<ref>Eggers Lan, ''The pre-Socratic philosophers'', p. 410ff.</ref> Eggers Lan proposes a correction of the traditional date of the foundation of Elea. Based on [[Herodotus]] I, 163–167, which indicates that the [[Phocia]]ns, after defeating the [[Ancient Carthage|Carthaginians]] in naval battle, founded Elea, and adding the reference to [[Thucydides]] I, 13, where it is indicated that such a battle occurred in the time of [[Cambyses II]], the foundation of Elea can be placed between 530 BC and 522 BC So Parmenides could not have been born before 530 BC or after 520 BC, given that it predates [[Empedocles]].<ref>Eggers Lan, ''The pre-Socratic philosophers'', pp. 412ff.</ref> This last dating procedure is not infallible either, because it has been questioned that the fact that links the passages of Herodotus and Thucydides is the same.<ref>Thucydides, ''[[History of the Peloponnesian War]]'', p. 43, no. 106 of Torres Esbarranch.</ref> [[:es:Nestor Luis Cordero|Nestor Luis Cordero]] also rejects the chronology based on the Platonic text, and the historical reality of the encounter, in favor of the traditional date of Apollodorus. He follows the traditional datum of the founding of Elea in 545 BC, pointing to it not only as ''[[terminus post quem]]'', but as a possible date of Parmenides's birth, from which he concludes that his parents were part of the founding contingent of the city and that he was a contemporary of [[Heraclitus]].<ref name="Cor2023" />