ZENO ELEATES, or of Elea, one of the greatest philosophers among the ancients, flourished about the 504th year before the Christian era. He was the disciple of Parmenides, and even, according to some writers, his adopted son. Aristotle asserts, that he was the inventor of logic; but his logic seems to have been calculated to perplex all things, and not to clear up any thing. For Zeno employed it only to dispute against all comers, and to silence his opponents, whether they argued right or wrong. He proposed very embarrassing arguments with respect to the existence of motion; and Aristotle, in the sixth book of his Physics, has preserved some of them, which are extremely subtle, especially the famous argument named Achilles.
As he lived long before Diogenes the Cynic, it is certain that those who have said that this last philosopher refuted Zeno's arguments against motion, by taking a turn or two up and down his school, are mistaken. He flew into a violent passion with a man who railed at him; and it being thought strange that he should feel such indignation, he replied, "Were I insensible to censure, I should be equally so with respect to praise." He showed great courage in suffering pain; for having undertaken to restore liberty to his country, which groaned under the oppression of a tyrant, and the enterprise being discovered, he supported with extraordinary firmness the sharpest torments. It is said that he had the courage to bite off his tongue, and spit in the tyrant's face, for fear of being forced, by the violence of his torments, to discover his accomplices. Some say that he was pounded alive in a mortar.