This chapter comprises two parts. The first addresses the physical natural and social function of archaic and classical Greek roads. Of key importance is the fact that ancient Greek roads were not paved on the surface of the earth but were ruts inscribed into it; when a vehicle set out on such a road, it was thus locked into these ruts as a tramcar is locked onto its tracks. I gesture towards the bearing that this will have on Parmenides’ use of road imagery to develop and articulate a notion of what we would call logical necessity. The second half of this chapter examines the semantics of the word hodos. Notably, the word can signify both an object (especially the rut road just discussed) and an activity. This activity is teleological, a characteristic I explore in terms borrowed from discussions of linguistic aspect and the Kenny–Vendler typology of situations; I conclude that the activity signified by the word hodos is a kind of accomplishment in that it is both durative and telic. Exploiting the two meanings of hodos and harnessing the distinctive features of each, Parmenides imparts a distinctive shape to his ‘Route to Truth’ and endows it with specific qualities characteristic of what we would call an extended deductive argument and a demonstration