154. The systems we have just been studying were all fundamentally pluralist, and they were so because Parmenides had shown that, if we take a corporeal monism seriously, we must ascribe to reality a number of predicates which are inconsistent with our experience of a world which everywhere displays multiplicity, motion, and change (§ 97). The four “roots” of Empedokles and the innumerable “seeds” of Anaxagoras were both of them conscious attempts to solve the problem which Parmenides had raised (§§ 106, 127). There is no evidence, indeed, that the Pythagoreans were directly influenced by Parmenides, but it has been shown (§ 147) how the later form of their system was based on the theory of Empedokles. Now it was just this prevailing pluralism that Zeno criticised from the Eleatic standpoint; and his arguments were especially directed against Pythagoreanism. Melissos, too, criticises Pythagoreanism; but he tries to find a common ground with his adversaries by maintaining the old Ionian thesis that reality is infinite. I. ZENO OF ELEA [Sidenote: Life.] 155. According to Apollodoros,[851] Zeno flourished in Ol. LXXIX. (464-460 B.C.). This date is arrived at by making him forty years younger than his master Parmenides. We have seen already (§ 84) that the meeting of Parmenides and Zeno with the young Sokrates cannot well have occurred before 449 B.C., and Plato tells us that Zeno was at that time “nearly forty years old.”[852] He must, then, have been born about 489 B.C., some twenty-five years after Parmenides. He was the son of Teleutagoras, and the statement of Apollodoros that he had been adopted by Parmenides is only a misunderstanding of an expression of Plato’s _Sophist_.[853] He was, Plato further tells us,[854] tall and of a graceful appearance. Footnote 851: Diog. ix. 29 (R. P. 130 a). Apollodoros is not expressly referred to for Zeno’s date; but, as he is quoted for his father’s name (ix. 25; R. P. 130), there can be no doubt that he is also the source of the _floruit_. Footnote 852: Plato, _Parm._ 127 b (R. P. 111 d). The visit of Zeno to Athens is confirmed by Plut. _Per._ 4 (R. P. 130 e), where we are told that Perikles “heard” him as well as Anaxagoras. It is also alluded to in _Alc._ I. 119 a, where we are told that Pythodoros, son of Isolochos, and Kallias, son of Kalliades, each paid him 100 minae for instruction. Footnote 853: Plato, _Soph._ 241 d (R. P. 130 a). Footnote 854: Plato, _Parm._, _loc. cit._