"[H]e had been a Pythagorean ...and ...the poem is a renunciation of his former beliefs. ...The goddess tells him ...he must learn of those beliefs also "how men ought to have judged that the things which seem to them really are." ...He is to learn these beliefs "in order that no opinion of mortals may ever get the better of him" (fr. 8, 61). ...[T]he Pythagorean system ...was handed down by oral tradition ...Parmenides was founding a dissident school, and it was ...necessary ...to instruct ...disciples in the system ...to oppose. ...[T]hey could not reject it intelligently without a knowledge of it, and this Parmenides had to supply ..."