Jaap Mansfeld et al. Ja ap m a n sf

Melissus between Miletus and Elea I

 

 

81

 

not been transmitted verbatim,

40

 but the attribute itself, listed at the beginning of 

fr. 30 B7(1), is certainly authentic and has ample precedent in Parmenides.

41

 A 

whole further series of attributes follows, each of which is proved:

42

 as Being is 

homogeneous it does not become different so is not destroyed, does not become 

larger, is not rearranged, does not suffer pain, and does not suffer distress. We 

note that not all these attributes are anticipated in Parmenides. 

In the majority of proofs the distinction between Being and non-Being or 

‘nothing’ constitutes the basis for the argument, and several attributes entail an-

other one. Change means that Being is not homogeneous, that what was before 

is destroyed, and what is not comes to be (quod non, as is proved in frr. 30 B2 

and B3). ‘If it were to become different by one hair

43

 in ten thousand years, it 

would wholly perish in the whole of time’. In Parmenides change is excluded 

implicitly rather than explicitly, as the word ἀκινητόν seems to pertain in the 

first place to movement.

44

 Rearrangement – not spelled out in Parmenides – is 

excluded, as the earlier ‘orderly arrangement’ (κόσμος) is not destroyed, and an 

arrangement that is not does not come to be. But that nothing is either added or 

taken away echoes Parmenides’ claim that Being cannot become larger or small-

er.

45

 

That Being feels neither pain nor stress is a remarkable innovation compared 

with Parmenides, and calls to mind the arguments against the thesis that God(s) 

exist(s) for ever formulated several centuries later by Carneades: what perceives 

feels pain, what feels pain changes, what changes perishes in the end.

46

 I believe 

the point is polemical: Melissus wishes to exclude that Being should be thought 

to be alive, or divine, in contrast to the principles of the early philosophers of 

nature, the divine status of which has been so successfully brought to our atten-

tion by Werner Jaeger more than sixty years ago.

47

 This refusal to accord sen-

tience to Being is analogous to the decision to deprive the presentation of Being 

of a dramatic and divine apparatus like that imagined by Parmenides. Everything 

should be as low-key as possible. 

The final section of the fragment is devoted to the explicit denial of the ex-

istence of a void (κενεόν), ‘for the void is nothing, and what is nothing cannot 

be’. This is new and goes quite a bit farther than Parmenides’ claim that ‘it [sc. 

                                                            

40

 The argument may be extant at [Arist.] MXG 1.974a12–14: to be inhomogeneous is to be several, 

not one.  

41

 Fr. 28 B8.5.22.47. 

42

 Note that the order of the proofs is not the same as that of the epithets in the announcement. 

43

 See LSJ v. θρίξ II.2. 

44

 Cf. Parmenides fr. 28 B8.26. 

45

 Fr. 28 B8.44–45. 

46

 Sext. Emp. M. 9.139–147. 

47

 Jaeger (1947). This attitude is not contradicted by the curious note at Diog. Laert. 9.24, ‘he said one 

should avoid making pronouncements about the gods, as there is no knowledge of them’ (ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ 

θεῶν ἔλεγε μὴ δεῖν ἀποφαίνεσθαι, μὴ γὰρ εἶναι γνῶσιν αὐτῶν), of which Gérard Journée reminds me. 

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Jaap Mansfeld

 

 

Being] is entirely full (ἔμπλεόν) of being’, where one can only find an implicit 

denial of the void if one already has a concept of ‘void’.

48

 This denial is followed 

by the familiar Parmenidean claim that Being does not move.

49

 In Parmenides 

Being’s immobility is derived from its immunity against coming to be and de-

struction,

50

 but in Melissus immobility is derived from Being’s plenitude (πλέων 

ἐστίν: the inherited Parmenidean attribute returns by the back door). Everything 

is full, so there is no someplace to withdraw towards. The argument is first for-

mulated in a positive and then repeated in a negative mode: ‘if a void existed it 

would withdraw to it, but as the void does not exist there is no place to which it 

can withdraw’. Plenitude moreover excludes its being ‘dense’ and ‘rare’ (πυκνόν 

and ἀραιόν). In Parmenides too plenitude is bound up with ‘being neither more 

here nor less there’,

51

 but the different terms chosen by Melissus undoubtedly 

echo attributes of the two elements of the Parmenidean Doxa, one of which is 

ἀραιόν (glossed as ἐλαφρόν, or the other way round)

52

 while the other is 

πυκινόν.

53

 The rare moreover is ‘emptier’ (κενεώτερον) than the dense (and 

emptiness, or void, as has been argued, does not exist), for 

the following distinction (κρίσιν) must be made: between full and not full: if it with-

draws at all or receives something, it is not full; if it neither withdraws nor receives, 

it is full. Accordingly, if the void does not exist it has of necessity to be full. Accord-

ingly, if it is full, it does not move. 

In Parmenides the κρίσις pertains to the fundamental distinction between ‘it 

is or it is not’,

54

 in Melissus it addresses that between full and not full. This again 

shows that the emphasis has shifted from the foundations of cognition to a de-

scription of Being as a thing. The argument of the final section, fr. 30 B7(7)–

(10), constitutes a ring composition, for the conclusion that Being does not move 

because it is full (B7(10)) is also found as a premise at its beginning (B7(7)). 

The author (or orator) really wants his audience to retain his points. 

Two more fragments, brief ones, also belong in the context of the attributes 

of Being: fr. 30 B9, which tells us that, ‘being infinite and one, it cannot have a 

body (σῶμα)’, and fr. 30 B10, which tells us that ‘Being is indivisible, for if 

divisible it would move (εἰ γὰρ διῄρηται, φησί, τὸ ἐόν, κινεῖται), but if it moves 

it cannot be [quod non]’. The latter fragment takes up one of the attributes of 

Parmenides’ Being: ‘it is not divisible, since it is wholly homogenous’.

55

 The 

                                                            

48

 Fr. 28 B8.24. 

49

 Fr. 28 B8.4.26–31. 

50

 Fr. 28 B8.26–28. 

51

 Fr. 28 B8.23–24. 

52

 These adjectives are already found in Homer. Verdenius (1948) argues that we should keep both and 

delete ἤπιον at the beginning of the line. 

53

 Fr. 28 B8.57.59. These opposites are also found at Anaxagoras frr. 59 B12 and B15. 

54

 Fr. 28 B8.15–16. 

55

 Fr. 28 B8.22. 

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