  The evidence of Plato’s Parmenides, then, does not license  the conventional view that Zeno’s arguments against plurality and  motion were intended to support the strict monism of Parmenides.  Claims to the contrary have rested upon selective and prejudicial use of this evidence due to the tendency to privilege Socrates’ remarks  on Zeno’s purposes over Zeno’s own qualifications and corrections of  that analysis. What Plato actually suggests is that Zeno aimed to  show those whose superficial understanding of Parmenides had led them to charge him with flying in the face of common sense, that common  sense views concerning unity and plurality are themselves riddled  with latent contradictions. Such is, essentially, the judgment of  Jonathan Barnes: “Zeno was not a systematic Eleatic solemnly  defending Parmenides against philosophical attack by a profound and  interconnected set of reductive argumentations. Many men had mocked  Parmenides: Zeno mocked the mockers. His logoi were designed to reveal the inanities and ineptitudes inherent in the ordinary  belief in a plural world; he wanted to startle, to amaze, to  disconcert. He did not have the serious metaphysical purpose of  supporting an Eleatic monism” (Barnes 1982, 236). However,  whether the historical Zeno was actually involved in anything like  the dialectical context Plato envisages for him must remain  uncertain. Even if there were already in Zeno’s day individuals who  mistook Parmenides’ position for the thesis that only one thing  exists, the idea that Zeno’s arguments were motivated by a desire to  respond to such individuals in kind is as historically unverifiable  as the claim Plato puts in his mouth that his book was stolen and  circulated before he could decide for himself whether to make his  arguments public (Pl. Prm. 128d7–e1). 