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MELISSUSSamos, 5th century B.C. |
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Student of Parmenides and Heraclitus. Its heyday is placed during the 84th Olympiad, i.e. in the period 444-441 BC. An opponent of Pericles, he convinced his compatriots to fight the Athenians, whom they defeated. Along with Xenophanes, Parmenides and Zeno, Melissos belongs to the so-called Eleatic school. He accepted being as a principle, which he characterized as immovable and unchanging, while becoming was considered illusory, as a creation of the senses. However, contrary to Parmenides, he taught that Being itself is finite but indefinite.
To Melissus is attributed the view that even if there were many things, each of them should have the qualities of the gracious being. He also rejected Empedocles' teaching of the mixing of the four elements, as well as the atomic theory of empty space. He believed that nothing is certain in nature and that everything is perishable. Everything is still, otherwise there must be emptiness, but emptiness does not belong to beings. About the gods he said that we cannot know them, therefore we cannot say anything about them. Simplicius saves excerpts from his On Nature or Being, which are included in Diels/Kranz, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. The title of Gorgias' work On nature or on non-being echoes the work of Melissos.