Pherecydes of Syros
6th-century BCE Greek mythographer and proto-philosopher · Academics · Lived 580 BC to 499 BC · aged 81
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Something wrong?An island thinker who may have taught Pythagoras, Pherecydes is remembered for one thing above all: he was likely the first Greek to write philosophy in prose rather than verse. His cosmogony survives mostly in fragments and secondhand reports, but its reach runs through Pythagoreanism and Orphism alike.
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About this person
Pherecydes lived in the 6th century BCE on Syros, and stories swirl around him - some called him one of the Seven Sages, others said he studied secret Phoenician texts or learned from Pittacus. He wrote a cosmogony known as the "Pentemychos" or "Heptamychos," now lost except for brief quotations and one long papyrus fragment. In it, three divine principles - Zas (Life), Cthonie (Earth), and Chronos (Time) - shape the cosmos: Chronos creates the elements and gods in earthen cavities, then Zas battles the dragon Ophion, casts him into Oceanus, and marries Chthonie, who becomes the recognizable Earth with its forests and peaks. Aristotle saw him as a bridge from Hesiod's mythology toward systematic inquiry, while others credited him with introducing the transmigration of souls to Greek thought. Legends and supposed miracles trailed him, many linking him to the rise of Pythagoreanism and Orphism.
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