Like Parmenides and most other early philosophers, Zeno seems to have played a part in the politics of his native city. Strabo ascribes to him some share of the credit for the good government of Elea, and says that he was a Pythagorean.[855] This statement can easily be explained. Parmenides, we have seen, was originally a Pythagorean, and the school of Elea was no doubt popularly regarded as a mere branch of the larger society. We hear also that Zeno conspired against a tyrant, whose name is differently given, and the story of his courage under torture is often repeated, though with varying details.[856] Footnote 855: Strabo, vi. p. 252 (R. P. 111 c). Footnote 856: Diog. ix. 26, 27, and the other passages referred to in R. P. 130 c. [Sidenote: Writings.] 156. Diogenes speaks of Zeno’s “books,” and Souidas gives some titles which probably come from the Alexandrian librarians through Hesychios of Miletos.[857] In the _Parmenides_, Plato makes Zeno say that the work by which he is best known was written in his youth and published against his will.[858] As he is supposed to be forty years old at the time of the dialogue, this must mean that the book was written before 460 B.C. (§ 84), and it is very possible that he wrote others after it. The most remarkable title which has come down to us is that of the _Interpretation of Empedokles_. It is not to be supposed, of course, that Zeno wrote a commentary on the Poem of Empedokles; but, as Diels has pointed out,[859] it is quite credible that he should have written an attack on it, which was afterwards called by that name. If he wrote a work against the “philosophers,” that must mean the Pythagoreans, who, as we have seen, made use of the term in a sense of their own.[860] The _Disputations_ and the _Treatise on Nature_ may, or may not, be the same as the book described in Plato’s _Parmenides_. Footnote 857: Diog. ix. 26 (R. P. 130); Suidas _s.v._ (R. P. 130 d). Footnote 858: Plato, _Parm._ 128 d 6 (R. P. 130 d). Footnote 859: _Berl. Sitzb._, 1884, p. 359. Footnote 860: See above, p. 321, _n._ 740. It hardly seems likely that a later writer would make Zeno argue πρὸς τοὺς φιλοσόφους, and the title given to the book at Alexandria must be based on something contained in it.