ABSTRACT
In the proem, Parmenides describes his own journey to the goddess2 - an experience of enrapture - and her kind welcome. It ends with a brief but invaluable abstract (in five lines) of her impending revelation. We possess the proem complete. Then comes the first part - Part 1 - of her revelation, the Way of Truth. This we possess almost complete, and its two main messages are perfectly clear, though very startling. They are a theory of knowledge and a theory of the real world, as known to the gods. Both are delivered by the goddess with divine authority, but not in the spirit of dogmatism. The listener, Parmenides, is treated as a critical thinker. The appeal is to his intellect, and perhaps to his intellectual pride.
