Possibly the least influential of the Eleatic philosophers, but a fine naval commander, since his fleet defeated the Athenians in 441 bc. He was heavily criticized by Aristotle (De Sophisticis Elenchis, 167 b and Physics, 186 a 6). Melissus held a cosmology comparable to that of Parmenides. He argued that change is impossible, on the grounds that all change involves something becoming nothing; what exists must therefore be eternal, and spatially infinite, and finally incorporeal. Melissus is principally remembered for turning the argument against non-being into an argument against the void, and in favour of the plenum, although of course it is populated by incorporeal stuff.