Commentary

This opening passage of the poem presents the philosopher's journey in a chariot drawn by mares, guided along the road of a goddess, and it establishes the allegorical frame within which the argument that follows is presented. Kirk, Raven, and Schofield discuss the proem as a traditional form of epic and cosmological poetry, and they note the affinities with earlier Greek accounts of journeys to divine knowledge. Alexander Mourelatos argues that the road of the goddess is best understood as the path of reasoning, so that the allegory expresses a claim about the way the mind reaches truth. Jonathan Barnes observes that the proem's imagery has been read as religious, as literary, and as a philosophical device, and that the translation of the key terms is contested. Patricia Curd's study notes that the proem's sense of divine revelation contrasts sharply with the rationalism of the argument that follows, a tension critics have often remarked. The English here is approximate, and the Greek should be consulted before quotation, since the proem contains several difficult terms.