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This small collection gathers the ancient testimonies about Parmeniscus of Metapontum, an early Pythagorean known only from passing references. Iamblichus lists him among the Pythagoreans of Metapontum, and Diogenes Laertius reports the tradition that he and Orestadas ransomed the philosopher Xenophanes from slavery. Athenaeus tells how Parmeniscus, a man of wealth and good family, lost the ability to laugh after descending into the oracle cave of Trophonius, and only recovered it on Delos, at the sight of a shapeless wooden image of Leto.
The testimonies offer a glimpse of the early Pythagorean communities of southern Italy and the network of figures around them. The Trophonius story, taken by Athenaeus from Semus of Delos, is also a valuable piece of evidence for Greek oracle lore and the reputation of the terrifying consultation at Lebadea.
About this edition. The Greek text comes from the Eulogikon open corpus of public-domain editions (standard reference: DK 20). Every word has been analyzed with odyCy, a neural language model for Ancient Greek — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from the Liddell–Scott–Jones Greek–English Lexicon (LSJ).