 Parmenides gives us a poem in Homeric hexameters, narrating the journey of a young man (a kouros, in Greek) who is taken to meet a goddess who promises to teach him “all things” (DK28B1/LM19D4). The content of the story the goddess tells is not the knowledge that will allow humans, by having it, to know. Rather, the goddess gives the kouros the tools to acquire that knowledge himself: