People in Time

Pherecydes of Syros

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Pherecydes of Syros (/fəˈrɛsɪˌdiːz/; Greek: Φερεκύδης ὁ Σύριος; fl. 6th century BCE) was an Ancient Greek mythographer and proto-philosopher from the island of Syros. Little is known about his life and death.

There is even some discrepancy in the ancient sources of his life as to when exactly he lived within the 6th century. The Suda places his date of birth during the reign of King Alyattes in Lydia (c. 605-560 BCE),[c] which would place him as a contemporary of the Seven Sages of Greece,[d], among whose number he was occasionally included. Alternatively, Apollodorus, places his floruit several decades later, in the 59th Olympiad (544–541 BCE), a generation later. Assuming that Pherecydes was born in this later generation, younger than the philosopher Thales (624-545 BC) and thus an older contemporary of Anaximander, he would also be approximately the correct age for the Pythagorean tradition in which he is regarded as a teacher of Pythagoras

Pherecydes of Syros



Some ancient testimonies counted Pherecydes among the Seven Sages of Greece, although he is generally believed to have lived in the generation after them.
Pherecydes flourished around the sixth century BC.

He is the most important forerunner of the Presocratic thought. Pherecydes’ Heptamychia is the first prose style work in Greek literature and includes the first attempt in Greek thought to rationalize Greek mythology.

Some claim that he was a student of Pittacus, others say that he was a well-traveled autodidact who had studied secret Phoenician books.
According to some ancient sources Pherecydes was the teacher of Pythagoras. As Diogenes Laertius testifies (Vitae Philosophorum I.119) Pherecydes died and was buried by Pythagoras in Delos.
 
He was characterized by Aristotle in Metaphysics, Book XIV, as a theologian who mixed philosophy and myth.

For Pherecydes, in the beginning of cosmos three primary and eternal principles existed: Zeus, Time and Earth. Pherecydes is the first ancient author to introduce the everlastingness of time (chronos). Chronos is the everlasting procreative cosmogonical principle, personified as one of the three primal everlasting principles that initially began the generation of Cosmos: Zas/Zeus, Chronos/Time and Chthonie/Earth. The self-creative nature of Pherecydes’ time eliminates ex nihilo creation. The universe cannot result from non-being, but only from some basic procreative and self-creative everlasting principles. The early Presocratics were influenced by his radical thought especially on the following fields:
•The denial of ex nihilo creation
•The self-creation of cosmos
•The eternal nature of the first principles

Pherecydes' cosmogony forms a bridge between the mythological thought of Hesiod and pre-Socratic Greek philosophy. Aristotle considered him one of the earliest thinkers to abandon traditional mythology in order to arrive at a systematic explanation of the world, although Plutarch, as well as many other writers, still gave him the title of theologus, as opposed to the later physiologoi of the Ionian school. Later hellenistic doxographers also considered him as one of the first thinkers to introduce a doctrine of the transmigration of souls to the Ancient Greek religion, which influenced the metempsychosis of Pythagoreanism, and the theogonies of Orphism.
Both Cicero and Augustine thought of him having given the first teaching of the "immortality of the soul".
The battle between the sky god and dragon described by Pherecydes, as well as Hesiod in his Theogony is a widespread motif with Eastern parallels, such as Marduk-Tiamat and Anzu-Ninurta


His final letter...
Pherecydes to Thales
122. “May yours be a happy death when your time comes. Since I received your letter, I have been attacked by disease. I am infested with vermin and subject to a violent fever with shivering fits. I have therefore given instructions to my servants to carry my writing to you after they have buried me. I would like you to publish it, provided that you and the other sages approve of it, and not otherwise. For I myself am not yet satisfied with it. The facts are not absolutely correct, nor do I claim to have discovered the truth, but merely such things as one who inquires about the gods picks up. The rest must be thought out, for mine is all guess-work. As I was more and more weighed down with my malady, I did not permit any of the physicians or my friends to come into the room where I was, but, as they stood before the door and inquired how I was, I thrust my finger through the keyhole and showed them how plague-stricken I was; and I told them to come to-morrow to bury Pherecydes.”

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