The Effect of Parmenides on Plato

Parmenides poem relates the story of his journey in a divine chariot into an other world, which many scholars want to say is the underworld. He is in fact initiated into the mysteries of truth by this goddess. The modern philosopher Martin Heidegger sometimes reads like an esoteric devotee of Parmenides. We are especially interested in the effect that this giant of early philosophy had on the next great giant of philosophy, Plato.