A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

ZENON. ZENON. 1317
Stoa, though foe centuries it banded together around termine. Simplicius like Plato characterises the
it the noblest spirits, to struggle against the moral treatise to which he referred as composed in prose,
corruption of the age, had not proceeded from a full as a -eyypa/-1a, though still the dialogical form
and unrestricted love of wisdom, but from the indicated by Plato, and the division of the treatise
impulse after a completely satisfactory mode of life. into different argumentations (A6yovs), each of
It no longer formed a member of the ever rising which carried out different assumptions (vxro0E'eets;
series of development of the philosophising spirit comp. Plat. Parme. p. 127; Arist. Elench. Soph. c. 10;
of the Greeks, but rather already belonged to the Diog. Labrt. iii. 47), does not manifest itself; a
descending series. mode of dealing with the subject which seems to
2. Of ELEA (Velia), son of Teleutagoras, and have been the immediate occasion which led Arisfavourite disciple of Parmenides. He was with totle to regard Zenon as the originator of dialectic.
the latter in Athens about the 80th Olympiad, (Diog. Lalirt. ix. 25; comp. viii. 57; Sext. Emip.
when Socrates was still very young. At this time adv. Math. vii. 6). Of other treatises of Zenon
he was 40 years old, and consequently was born we only learn the titles:- Discussions (e'pkes),
about the 70th Olympiad (Diog. LaeIrt. ix. 28; Against the Natural Philosophers (7rpbs robs CpvoPlut. Soph. p. 217, Paren. p. 127; comp. Thleaet. KO0S), On Nature (7repl tpuerws), Explanation of
p. 183). With this chronology we can easily re- the poems of Empedocles ( TCYil~eTs'rW roO'Ensconcile the statements which assign, as the period WrEtoKAieovs, Suid. s. v.), and must leave it undewhen he flourished, the 78th Olympiad (Suid. s. v.), cided whether it was one of these, and if so, which
the 79th (Diog. Laert. ix. 29), or the 80th (Euseb. of them is the treatise referred to by Plato in the
Chron.). The statements that he unfolded his Parmenides. In another passage (Phaedr. p. 26;
doctrines to men like Pericles and Callias for the comp. Parrnz. p. 129) Plato manifestly speaks of
price of 100 minae (Plat. Alcib. i. p. 119; Olym- him, not of the rhetorician Alcidamas, as Quintilian
pied. in Alcib. p. 140, Kreuzer; Plut. Vit. Pericl. (lst. iii. 1) assumes, as the Eleatic Palamedes,
c. 4) indicate a rather long residence in Athens. whose art causes one and the same thing to appear
Of a well-grown and graceful person (ei'JkAc- se Kal both like and unlike, one and many, at rest and in
Xapesis 18eiv), Zenon was the favourite (rauacaK&) motion.
of Parmenides, says Plato (Parre. p. 127; comp. The way in which Zenon undertook to show
Diog. Lairt. ix. 25), where he doubtless intends the merely relative validity of our assertions with
the word to be taken in the honourable sense.egard to the phenomenal world, is shown partly
(comp. Schol. in Plat. 1. c.), not, as his traducers by his expressions which Simplicius has preserved,
thought (Athen. xi. p. 505), in a signification which according to which the multiplicity of phenomena
must have redounded to his disgrace in the eyes of must be set down as finite, because actual, and
those whom he held in such high esteem. The noblest consequently determinate; and as infinite, because
spiritual love of Zenon for his teacher is shown in the not made up of ultimate parts; and for that very
way'in which he devoted hiswhole energy to the de- reason as at the same time small and great; as, on
fence of the doctrines of Parmenides. He is also the one hand, in being divided ad infinitum, it
said to have taken part in the law-making (Speu- loses all magnitude, and on the other hand regains
sippus in Diog. Lairt. ix. 23) or law-mending it through the infinitude of the number of the
(Strabo vi. 1) of Parmenides, to the maintenance parts (the argument of the dichotomia, to which
of which the citizens of Elea had pledged themselves Aristotle refers, Phys. Ause. i. 3. p. 187. 1, and
every year by an oath (Plut. adv. Col. p. 1126; which Porphyrius had improperly referred to ParStrabo, 1. c.), and his love of legitimate freedom is menides; see Simplicius, 1. c.); partly by the
shown by the courage with which he exposed his question which he is said to have put to Protagoras,
life in order to deliver his native country from a whether a measure of corn, falling down, makes a
tyrant. (Plut. adv. Col. p. 1126, de Stoic. Repuyn. noise (4oqspeZ) in its fall, while a thousandth part
p. 105, de Garrulit. p. 505; comp. Diog. Laert. of the measure, or a single grain, does not (Arist.
ix. 26, &c.; Diodor. Exc. p. 557, Wessel.) Whether Phys. Ausc. vii. 5. p. 250. 9; Simpl. f. 255; Schol.
he perished in the attempt, or survived the fall of in Arist. p. 423, b. 40). On the infinite divisibility
the tyrant, is a point on which the authorities of space and time also was founded Zenon's arguvary. They also state the name of the tyrant ments to disprove the reality of motion (Arist.
differently. Plys. Ausc. vi. 9; comp. c. 1, 2; Simpl. f. 236, b;
Unfortunately also the writings of Zenon pe- Themist. f. 55, b. &c.; Schol. in Arist. p. 413;
rished earlier thanthose of Parmenides and Melissus. comp. Diog. LaUrt. ix. 29). He endeavoured to
Even the indefatigable Simplicius had not succeeded show, 1. that on account of the infinite divisibility
in possessing himself of more than one of the trea- of the space to be passed through the motion cannot
tises of the Eleatic philosopher, and even this he begin at all; 2. that for that same reason the
probably had before him only in extracts (Simpl. in creature which moves most slowly (the- tortoise)
Arist. Phys. f. 30, a. b.). In explaining the difficult could not be overtaken by the swiftest (Achilles);
passage of Aristotle respecting the mode in which 3. that the moving body must at the same time be
Zenon demonstrated the inconceivableness of motion, in motion, and also, inasmuch as it occupies space,
lihe manifestly had not Zenon's own words before at rest; 4. that one and the same space of time
him. Alexander and Porphyrius in all probability might, in different relations, be both long and short
were not even acquainted with what Simplicius (comp. Bayle, Diet. Crit. s. v.). Consequently, Zequotes from the treatise of Zenon. (Simpl. I. c.) non manifestly concluded, we nowhere find in the
But whether this was the youthful essay charac- phenomenal world a really existing thing, remaining
terised in the Parmenides of Plato, in which, in like itself; and consequently we nowhere find an
order to defend his master's doctrine of the oneness actual thing; it distributes itself into a multiformity
of the existent, he had developed the contradictions which has neither subsistence nor unity; for that
involved in the presupposition of a multiplicity of which neither increases when added, nor diminishes
the existent (Plat. Parte. p. 128), we cannot de- when taken away, - that is, the true, indivisible
4P 3