Editing Parmenides (section)

=== Dating, style and transmission ===
In the introduction to the poem,{{efn|{{harvnb|DK 28B1}}.24}} the goddess speaks to the recipient of the message, presumably Parmenides himself, calling him κοῦρε (''koûre'', "young man"). It has been suggested that because this word refers to a man no older than thirty years and, taking into account Parmenides' date of birth, we can place the creation of the poem between [[490 BC]] and the [[475 BC]]<ref name="Corn1" />{{sfn|Kirk|Raven|Schofield|1982}}  But it has been objected that the word must be understood in its religious context: it indicates the relation of superiority of the goddess with respect to the man who receives the revelation from her.<ref>Burkert, «Das Proëmium», p. 14, no. 32;</ref> Guthrie supports this idea, supporting it with a quote ([[Aristophanes]], ''[[The Birds (play)|The Birds]]'' 977) where the word precisely indicates not the age of a man (which otherwise he is not young), but rather his situation with respect to the interpreter of oracles by whom he is being questioned. His conclusion is that it is impossible to say at what age Parmenides wrote the poem.{{sfn|Guthrie|1979|p=16}}

Much has been said about the poetic form of his writing. [[Plutarch]] considered it to be just a way of avoiding prose,{{efn|Plutarch, ''Quomodo adol. poet. aud. deb.'' 16c (A 15).}} and criticized its versification.{{efn|Plutarch, ''De aud.'' 45a–b (A 16).}} Proclus said that despite using metaphors and tropes, forced by the poetic form, his writing is more like prose than poetry.{{efn|Proclus, ''Parmenides'' I p. 665, 17 (A 18).}} Simplicius, to whom we owe the preservation of most of the text that has come down to us, holds a similar opinion: one should not be surprised at the appearance of mythical motifs in his writing, due to the poetic form he uses.{{efn|Simplicius, ''Physics'', 144, 25 – 147, 2 (A 20).}} For [[Werner Jaeger]], Parmenides' choice of the didactic epic poem form is a highly significant innovation. It involves, on the one hand, the rejection of the prose form introduced by [[Anaximander]]. On the other hand, it means a link with the form of the ''Theogony'' of [[Hesiod]]. But the link affects not only the form, but also certain elements of the content: in the second part of Parmenides' poem (fragments B 12 and 13) Hesiod's cosmogonic [[Eros]] appears (''Theogony'' 120) along with a large number of allegorical deities such as War, Discord, Desire,{{efn|[[Cicero]], ''de deor. nat.'', I, 11, 18 (A 37).}} whose origin in the ''Theogony'' cannot be doubted. However, putting these cosmogonic elements in the second part, dedicated to the world of appearance, also involves the rejection of this way of understanding the world, a way alien to the Truth for Parmenides. Hesiod had presented his theogonic poem as a revelation from divine beings. He had made the invocation of the muses —already an epic convention— the story of a personal experience of initiation into a unique mission, that of revealing the origin of the gods. Parmenides in his poem presents his thought on the One and Immobile Entity as a divine revelation, as if to defeat Hesiod at his own game.<ref>Jaeger, ''The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers'' , p. 95s.</ref>

Parmenides's poem, as a complete work, is considered irretrievably lost. From its composition, it was copied many times, but the last reference to the complete work is made by Simplicius, in the 6th century: he writes that it had already become rare by then ('Physics' ', 144).<ref>Cordero, ''Being, one is'', p. 26.</ref> What comes to us from the poem are fragmentary quotes, present in the works of various authors. In this Parmenides does not differ from the majority of the [[Pre-Socratic philosophers]]. The first one who cites it is Plato, then Aristotle, Plutarch, Sextus Empiricus and Simplicius, among others. Sometimes the same group of verses is cited by several of these authors, and although the text of the citations often coincide, other times they present differences. This gives rise to arguments and speculations about which quote is the most faithful to the original. There are also cases in which the citation is unique.<ref>Cordero, ''Siendo, se es'', p. 27.</ref> The reconstruction of the text, starting from the reunion of all existing citations, began in the [[Renaissance]] and culminated in the work of [[Hermann Diels]], ''Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker'', in 1903, which established the texts of most of the philosophers prior to Plato.<ref>Cordero, ''Siendo, se es'', p. 28.</ref> This work contains a total of 19 presumably original "fragments" of Parmenides, of which 18 are in [[Ancient Greek|Greek]] and one consists of a rhythmic translation in [[Latin]]. 160 verses of the poem have been preserved. According to Diels' estimates, these lines represent about nine-tenths of the first part (the "way of truth"), plus one-tenth of the second (the "way of opinion").{{sfn|Guthrie|1979|p=18}} Diels' work was republished and modified by [[Walther Kranz]] in 1934. The edition had such an influence on studies that today Parmenides (as well as the other pre-Socratics) is cited according to the order of the authors and fragments of it. Parmenides occupies chapter 28 there, so he is usually cited with the abbreviation DK 28, then adding the type of fragment (A = ancient commentaries on life and doctrine; B = the fragments of the original poem) and finally the number. snippet (for example, "DK 28 B 1"). Even though this edition is considered canonical by philologists, numerous reissues have appeared that have proposed a new order of the fragments, and some specialists, such as Allan Hartley Coxon, have made collations on the manuscripts in which some of the quotations are preserved, and have questioned the reliability of the reading and establishment of Diels's text.<ref>Tudela, ''Poema'',Introduction, p. 7.</ref>