This volume collects three lectures given by Livio Rossetti in 2017 on the occasion of the tenth conference in a series dedicated to various aspects of Eleatic philosophy (‘Eleatica’). These lectures attempt to place Parmenides, Zeno and Melissus within the same tradition of thought, reflecting Plato’s attitude towards the Eleatics in the well-known section 242d of the Sophist. In a nutshell, in the first lecture Parmenides is not reduced to the classic ‘philosopher of being’, but is described as a multifaceted thinker, skilled in argumentation and able to exploit this ability to make his philosophical message as effective and convincing as possible. In the second lecture, Zeno is interpreted in the same ‘rhetorical’ perspective, instead of the usual (stricto sensu) ‘logical’ approach to his renowned paradoxes. The strategy of the paradox, which presents itself as a puzzle and strains, even frustrates, but simultaneously stimulates the listener’s cognitive capacity, is understood as a standard form of communication in the Greek culture of the fifth century BC. Finally, in the third lecture, the analysis of Melissus’ thought also seems to focus mainly on terminological and linguistic features. Rossetti, however, claims that the communicative strategies in Melissus’ ‘ontological’ poem differ from Zeno’s paradoxes in that they aim to convince the listener of the seriousness of the object of philosophical discourse.

The second part of the volume is devoted to other scholars’ critical commentary on the aforementioned lectures. For reasons of space, Iwill focus only on the comments of two great scholars, Jaap Mansfeld and Alexander P.D. Mourelatos, whose objections raised to the lectures I, for the most part, share. Mansfeld, in particular, criticizes the attempt to put the two parts of Parmenides’ Peri phuseōs (On Nature) on the same level: without denying that the section on the doxa also has its importance, it makes no sense, Mansfeld rightly observes, to consider it a completely autonomous part of the poem. Mourelatos is also convinced that Parmenides’ physical doctrines cannot be regarded as entirely independent of his ontological doctrine. Nevertheless, Mourelatos recognizes that Parmenides plays an important role in the advancement of astronomical science in antiquity.

The bibliography cited in the volume is rich, although not entirely up to date. There is no trace, for example, of Timothy Clarke’s recent monograph, Aristotle and the Eleatic One (Oxford 2019). Some of the theses presented in the lectures would have greatly benefited from a comparison (even a critical one) with a recently released work of mine (The Presocratics at Herculaneum: AStudy of Early Greek Philosophy in the Epicurean Tradition (Berlin 2021)) which, for clear chronological reasons, the volume under review here could not take into account. In any case, Iwould like to point out how a systematic investigation of Presocratic reception in Hellenistic philosophies, especially in the Epicurean school, shows how from Plato to the Neoplatonic commentators, the connection between Parmenides and Melissus followed a precise doxographical strategy that finds confirmation in Aëtius and in his Peripatetic (not only Theophrastean) roots. Study of the Epicurean sources shows, for instance, how in the Hellenistic age there was a strong tendency, on the one hand, to ‘Melissize’ Parmenides and, on the other hand, to ‘Parmenideize’ Xenophanes, although traces of this tendency were already present in Aristotle. From this point of view, the attempt to recover Melissus in the Eleatic stream, without paying much attention to the problem of reception, runs the risk of unilateral and excessively speculative readings. However, this shortcoming does not alter the fact that in many cases Rossetti’s theses are thought-provoking and original, although Imust confess to feeling a certain embarassment upon reading some formulas adopted in the lectures, that is, that Parmenides is a ‘virtual’ philosopher and Zeno a philosopher ‘without philosophy’. Apart from the objections raised by the commentators, Ibelieve that such an approach leaves a huge problem unresolved: that of Xenophanes and his place in the history of Presocratic philosophy. In the passage of Plato’s Sophist mentioned above, Xenophanes is described as the ancestor of the Eleatic school (indeed, the Stranger says that the Eleatic ethnos had its roots in a period even earlier than Xenophanes!). It would be worthwhile in the near future to revisit this tricky issue. However, in a volume that seems to aim to defend, through innovative arguments, the (philosophical) unity of Eleatism, say, from Elea to Samos, the absence of a reference to the ideal (if not historico-philosophical) relationship between Colophon and Elea is puzzling.