Parmenidean Fragments, 9–19

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9Now that all things have been named light and night, and the names which belong to the power of each have been assigned to these things and to those, everything is full at once of light and dark night, both equal, since neither has aught to do with the other.

10And thou shalt know the substance of the sky, and all the signs in the sky, and the resplendent works of the glowing sun’s pure torch, and whence they arose. And thou shalt learn likewise of the wandering deeds of the round-faced moon, and of her substance. Thou shalt know, too, the heavens that surround us, whence they arose, and how Necessity took them and bound them to keep the limits of the stars . . . 11how the earth, and the sun, and the moon, and the sky that is common to all, and the Milky Way, and the outermost Olympos, and the burning might of the stars arose.

12The narrower rings are filled with unmixed fire, and those next them with night, and in the midst of these rushes their portion of fire. In the midst of these circles is the divinity that directs the course of all things; for she is the beginner of all painful birth and all begetting, driving the female to the embrace of the male, and the male to that of the female.

13First of all the gods she contrived Eros.

14Shining by night with borrowed light, wandering round the earth.

15Always looking to the beams of the sun.

16For just as thought finds at any time the mixture of its erring organs, so does it come to men; for that which thinks is the same, namely, the substance of the limbs, in each and every man; for their thought is that of which there is more in them.

17On the right boys; on the left girls.[†]

19Thus, according to men’s opinions, did things come into being, and thus they are now. In time they will grow up and pass away. To each of these things men have assigned a fixed name.

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