 The goddess begins her account of “true reality,” or what is to be discovered along this first path, as follows: “As yet a single tale of a way/ remains, that it is; and along this path markers are there/ very many, that What Is is ungenerated and deathless,/ whole and uniform, and still and perfect” (fr. 8.1–4). What Is (to eon) has by this point become a name for what Parmenides will form a fuller conception of by following the goddess’ directions. These now include the programmatic description here in fr. 8.3–4 of the attributes What Is will be shown to have in the ensuing arguments. Thanks primarily to Simplicius’ transcription, we still possess in its entirety the portion of Parmenides’ poem comprising the goddess’s revelation of the nature of “true reality.” This account constitutes one of the philosophical tradition’s earliest, most extensive, and most important stretches of metaphysical reasoning.