169. In nearly all accounts of the system of Melissos, we find it stated that he denied the corporeality of what is real,—an opinion which is supported by a reference to fr. 9, which is certainly quoted by Simplicius to prove this very point.[913] If, however, our general view as to the character of early Greek Philosophy is correct, the statement must seem incredible. And it will seem even more surprising when we find that in the _Metaphysics_ Aristotle says that, while the unity of Parmenides seemed to be ideal, that of Melissos was material.[914] Now the fragment, as it stands in the MSS. of Simplicius,[915] puts a purely hypothetical case, and would most naturally be understood as a disproof of the existence of something on the ground that, if it existed, it would have to be both corporeal and one. This cannot refer to the Eleatic One, in which Melissos himself believed; and, as the argument is almost verbally the same as one of Zeno’s,[916] it is natural to suppose that it also was directed against the Pythagorean assumption of ultimate units. The only possible objection is that Simplicius, who twice quotes the fragment, certainly took it in the sense usually given to it.[917] But it was very natural for him to make this mistake. “The One” was an expression that had two senses in the middle of the fifth century B.C.; it meant either the whole of reality or the point as a spatial unit. To maintain it in the first sense, the Eleatics were obliged to disprove it in the second; and so it sometimes seemed that they were speaking of their own “One” when they really meant the other. We have seen that the very same difficulty was felt about Zeno’s denial of the “one.”[918] Footnote 913: See, however, Bäumker, _Das Problem der Materie_, pp. 57 sqq., who remarks that ἐόν (or ὄν) in fr. 9 must be the predicate, as it has no article. In his fifth edition (p. 611, n. 2) Zeller has adopted the view here taken. He rightly observes that the hypothetical form εἰ μὲν ὂν εἴη speaks for it, and that the subject to εἴη must be ἕκαστον τῶν πολλῶν, as with Zeno. Footnote 914: _Met._ Α, 5. 986 b 18 (R. P. 101). Footnote 915: Brandis changed the εἴη to ἔστι, but there is no warrant for this. Footnote 916: Cf. Zeno, fr. 1, especially the words εἰ δὲ ἔστιν, ἀνάγκη ἕκαστον μέγεθός τι ἔχειν καὶ πάχος. Footnote 917: Simpl. _Phys._ pp. 87, 6, and 110, 1. Footnote 918: See above, § 159, p. 363, _n._ 880. [Sidenote: Opposition to Anaxagoras.]