Parmenides' Sexual Theories. A Reply to Mr Kember

Abstract

In an article entitled ‘Right and left in the sexual theories of Parmenides’ (JHS xci [1971] 70–9) Mr Owen Kember challenges my statement (Polarity and Analogy [Cambridge, 1966] 17) that ‘Parmenides probably held that the sex of the child is determined by its place on the right or left of the mother's womb (right for males, left for females)’. In his article Kember draws attention, usefully, to the confusions and contradictions of the doxographic tradition. He has, however, in my view, misinterpreted one crucial piece of evidence. This is the testimony of Galen, who quotes Parmenides Fragment 17 (δεξιτεροῖσιν μὲν κούρους, λαιοῖσι δὲ κούρας) in the course of his commentary on [Hippocrates] Epidemics vi ch. 48. Kember notes, correctly, that the meaning of the fragment by itself is quite unclear: ‘the only deduction which can be safely made from the actual fragment is that Parmenides thought right and left were somehow connected with sex, and even here we must rely on Galen's judgement that the passage did in fact refer to sex in the first place’ (op. cit. 76).