ABSTRACT
IT is most probable that the Parmenides and the Theaetetus were composed almost simultaneously. The Parmenides cannot well be a decidedly earlier work than the other, since it exhibits the same interest in Eleaticism and its great founder Parmenides; it cannot well be later, since it is the best example in Plato of that cumbrousness of the indirectly reported dialogue form which is mentioned in the Theaetetus as the reason for return to the simpler type of the earliest dialogues. Indeed, it may well be that it was just the difficulty of keeping up in the Parmenides the fiction that the whole is recited by a speaker to whom it had been formerly recited by a second person, who in his turn had heard it from a third, which led Plato to renounce this type of composition for the future. It had been useful so long as his purpose had been largely dramatic, but was found to be worse than useless for works in which the main interest lies in the analysis and criticism of ideas.
