The following discussion' of the manuscript tradition of Simplicius' commentary on Aristotle's Physics i-iv originated in an examination of the tradition of the fragments of Parmenides. It is therefore illustrated not only from Simplicius but particularly from the texts of Parmenides quoted by him. This will not be misleading, since, though many of these texts are quoted by Simplicius more than once, there is little or no sign in any manuscript of interpolation from one passage to another and it is not likely that any scribe could have interpolated the text from an independent manuscript of Parmenides.

In all texts of the fragments of Parmenides printed in the last fifty years he begins his poem by speaking of ‘the way which’ (or, according to some, ‘the goddess who’) ‘carries through all towns the man who knows’ (). The more percipient critics have realized that is difficult or impossible to defend, for it makes no good sense and is incompatible with 1. 27, according to which the way is . In fact , which is alleged to be the reading of the best manuscript of Sextus' books Adversus Dogmaticos, has no manuscript authority at all.

In writing the following notes on some passages in Aeschylus' Persae I have consulted mainly the editions of Schiitz, Blomfield, Hermann, Paley, Vitelli–Wecklein, Sidgwick, Prickard, Wilamowitz, Mazon, and Italie (but not that of Groeneboom, which has been inaccessible), and the Index of Italie. The text quoted is that of Murray (ed. alt. 1955).

In the Classical Quarterly for April, 1933, Professor Cornford maintains that the ‘Two Ways’ of Parmenides are not meant as alternatives: ‘The Way of Truth and the Way of Seeming are no more parallel and alternative systems of cosmology, each complete in itself, than are Plato's accounts of the intellectual and sensible worlds.’ I wish here to try to support his general view, which seems to me to be indisputably correct, while differing from Professor Cornford in some important details.