among the ancients, a name given to that of the Stoics, because taught at Elea, in Latin Velia, a town of the Lucani.

The founder of this philosophy, or of the Eleatic sect, is supposed to have been Xenophanes, who lived about the 56th Olympiad, or between 500 or 600 years before Christ. This sect was divided into two parties, which may be denominated metaphysical and physical, the one rejecting, and the other approving, the appeal to fact and experiment. Of the former kind were Xenophanes, Parmenides, Melissus, and Zeno of Elea. They are supposed to have maintained principles not very unlike those of Spinoza; they held the eternity and immutability of the world; that whatever existed was only one being; that there was neither any generation nor corruption; that this one being was immoveable and immutable, and was the true God; and whatever changes seemed to happen in the universe, they considered as mere appearances and illusions of sense. However, some learned men have supposed, that Xenophanes and his followers, speaking metaphysically, understood by the universe, or the one being, not the material world, but the originating principle of of all things, or the true God, whom they expressly affirm to be incorporeal. Thus Simplicius represents them as merely metaphysical writers, who distinguished between things natural and supernatural; and who made the former to be compounded of different principles. Accordingly, Xenophanes maintained, that the earth consisted of air and fire; that all things were produced out of the earth, and the sun and stars out of clouds, and that there were four elements. Parmenides also distinguished between the doctrine concerning metaphysical objects, called truth, and that concerning physical or corporeal things, called opinion; with respect to the former there was one immoveable principle, but in the latter two that were moveable, viz. fire and earth, or heat and cold; in which particulars Zeno agreed with him. The other branch of the Eleatic sect were the atomic philosophers, who formed their system from an attention to the phenomena of nature; of these the most considerable were Leucippus, Democritus, and Protagoras.