Pherecydes of Leros

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Greek mythographer and logographer Pherecydes of Leros (c. 450s BC) came from the island of Leros. Pherecydes spent the greater part of his working life in Athens, and so he was also called Pherecydes of Athens (Suidas considered them separate.) Pherecydes of Leros should not be confused with Pherecydes of Syros, the mid-6th century philosopher, who was one of the Seven Sages of Greece and was reputed to have been the teacher of Pythagoras.

[edit] Works

Pherecydes of Leros's great treatises (a history of his birth isle, Leros; an essay, On Iphigeneia; and On the Festivals of Dionysus) are all lost. However, numerous fragments of his ten-book genealogies of the gods and heroes, which was written in the Ionian dialect to glorify the ancestors in the heroic age of his 5th century patrons, have been preserved. Pherecydes modified the legends, not in order to rationalize them, but rather to adjust them to popular beliefs. Therefore, Pherecydes cannot be classed with the later mythographer Hecataeus, whose Genealogiai ("Genealogies") were more skeptical and critical.