- See also Pherecydes of Leros
Pherecydes of Leros was a Greek mythographer and logographer. He 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: the encyclopedic Byzantine Suda considere Pherecydes of Athens and of Leros...
Pherecydes of Syros (in
GreekGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
: Φερεκύδης) was a Greek thinker from the island of
SyrosSyros , or Siros or Syra is a Greek island in the Cyclades, in the Aegean Sea. It is located south-east of Athens. The island is home to the municipalities of Ermoupoli, Ano Syros, and Poseidonia. Ermoupoli is the capital of the island and the Cyclades...
, of the
6th century BCThe sixth century BC started the first day of 600 BC and ended the last day of 501 BC.In India, Panini, sometime during this century, composed a grammar for Sanskrit, which is the one of oldest extant grammar of any language after 15 other proto-dravidian languages like Brahmi.In the Near East,...
. Pherecydes authored the Pentemychos
or Heptamychos, one of the first attested prose works in Greek literature, which formed an important bridge between mythic and pre-Socratic thought.
Life
Very little is known of his life. The sources are often contradictory. It has been said that he was a son of Babys, and that he was most likely active in ca. 540 BC.
Pentemychos or Heptamychos
Note that Pherecydes' book is called "Heptamychos" ("seven recesses") in the Suda and in all modern sources.
In this work, Pherecydes taught his philosophy through the medium of mythic representations. Although it is lost, the fragments that survive are enough to reconstruct a basic outline.
AristotleAristotle was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology.Together with Plato and Socrates , Aristotle is one of...
in
MetaphysicsMetaphysics is one of the principal works of Aristotle and the first major work of the branch of philosophy with the same name. The principal subject is "being qua being", or being understood as being. It examines what can be asserted about anything that exists just because of its existence and...
thus characterized Pherecydes' work as a mixture of
mythMythology is the study of myths and or of a body of myths. For example, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece. The term "myth" is often used colloquially to refer to a false story;...
and
philosophyPhilosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing these questions by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned...
.
The book "Pentemychos" is an elaborate version of cosmogenesis, describing how three eternal "things" or "beings" beget (or become, depending on how you read) a number of principles or forms before the ordered world, the cosmos, appears. The three eternal principles are Zas ("he who lives"), Chronos ("time"), and Chthonie ("underlying the earth").
The piecing together of what can be unraveled from the fragments tells us that Chronos (pre-cosmic not yet ordered time, one of Pherecydes' three eternals, to be distinguished from Kronos; ordered time) has an offspring, born when Chronos' seed is put into the pentemychos ("five recesses"). It is described in a fragment preserved in
Damascius'Damascius , known as "the last of the Neoplatonists," was the last scholarch of the School of Athens. He was one of the pagan philosophers persecuted by Justinian in the early 6th century, and was forced for a time to seek refuge in the Persian court, before being allowed back into the empire...
"De Principiis" that from the seed disposed into the pentemychos "were composed numerous other offspring of gods, what is called of the five recesses". A close relationship is thought to exist between these recesses and Chthonie, which is another of the three first-existing things. Chthonie has to do with the origin of the word "chthonic"; her name means "underlying the earth".
HesiodHesiod was a Greek oral poet. His date is uncertain but leading scholars , agree that Hesiod lived in the latter half of the eighth century BCE. Since at least Herodotus's time , Hesiod and Homer have generally been considered the earliest Greek poets whose work has survived, and they are often...
described Tartaros as being "in a mychos of broad-wayed earth", through which we may guess at a close affinity between krater, mychos, and Chthonie. Professor Hermann S. Schibli, author of the most acclaimed academic book on Pherecydes, thinks the five mychos were actually harboured within Chthonie, or at least were so initially when Chronos disposed his seed in the five "nooks".
Alongside Chthonie and Chronos, Pherecydes held a power called Zas. Zas is thought to be a strange etymological form of Zeus, and to be identical with he Orphic Eros in function, and as such a personification of masculine, or simply sexual, creativity.
ProclusProclus Lycaeus , called "The Successor" or "Diadochos" , was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher, one of the last major Classical philosophers . He set forth one of the most elaborate and fully developed systems of Neoplatonism...
said that "Pherecydes used to say that Zeus changed into Eros when about to create, for the reason that, having created the world from opposites, he led it into agreement and peace and sowed sameness in all things, and unity that interpenetrates the universe".
The act of creation itself (perhaps it is more accurate to say that Chronos creates—it is from his seed that the actual "stuff" comes from—and that Zas orders and distributes) is described mytho-poetically as Zas making a cloth on which he decorates earth and sea, and which he then presents as a wedding gift to Chthonie, and wraps around her. Yet, in another fragment it is not Chthonie, but "a winged oak" that he wraps the cloth around. The stories are not mutually exclusive, simply different. The chronology is hard to figure out because much is lacking in the fragments, but one thing is clear, and that is that creation is hindered by chaotic forces.
Before the world is ordered a cosmic battle takes place, with Kronos (ordered time) as the head of one side and Ophioneus as the leader of the other. The same story is elsewhere enacted with Zeus and Typhon/Typhoeus as leading characters, and it also has close parallels in many myths from cultures other than the Greek (Marduk vs. Tiamat, etc). Ophioneus and its brood are often depicted as ruling the birthing cosmos for some time, before falling from power. The chaotic forces are eternal and cannot be destroyed; instead they are thrown out from the ordered world and locked away in Tartaros in a kind of "appointment of the spheres", in which the victor (Zeus-Kronos) takes possession of the sky and of space and time. The locks to Tartaros are fashioned in iron by Zeus, and might hence have been associated with his element of aither, and in bronze by Poseidon, which might indicate a link to water (which was often conceived of as the "first matter"). Judging from some ancient fragments Ophioneus is thrown into Okeanos, not into Tartaros.
Exactly what entities or forces that were locked away in Pherecydes’ story cannot be known for sure, unless his book was miraculously recovered. Good guesswork would be to have five principal figures. We know that Ophioneus, or Typhon, was one and the same. We also know that Eurynome fought on the side of Ophioneus against Kronos. That Chthonie is a principal "thing" of the underworld is almost superfluous to argue, but whether she is to be counted as one of the five or the five "sum-total" is more of an open question. Apart from these we know that Ophioneus-Typhon mated with Echidna, and that Echidna herself was somehow mysteriously "produced" by Callirhoe. If Pherecydes counted five principal entities in association the pentemychos doctrine, then Ophioneus, Eurynome, Echidna, Calirrhoe and Chthonie are the main contenders.
As said, Kronos is replaced by Zeus in the more popularly known version, but the overall story remains the same. Kronos/Zeus orders the offspring out from the cosmos to Tartaros. There they are kept behind locked gates, fashioned in iron (associated with Zeus and his element of sky/space) and bronze (by Poseidon—the water force). We are told about chaotic beings put into the pentemychos, and we are told that the Darkness has an offspring that is cast into the recesses of Tartaros. A fragment exclusively making the equation for us is lacking, but it does indeed seem very, very plausible that the prison-house in Tartaros and the pentemychos are ways of referring to the essentially same thing. According to Celcus, Pherecydes said that: "Below that portion is the portion of Tartaros; the daughters of Boreas [the north wind], the Harpies and Thuella [Storm], guard it; there Zeus banished any of the gods whenever one behaves with insolence." Considering this statement, Pherecydes' own words, the identity between Zeus' prison-house and the pentemychos seems exceedingly likely.
Pherecydes' "Pentemychos" is thought to have contained a mystical esoteric teaching, treated allegorically. One ancient commentator said that:
"Also, Pherecydes, the man of Syros, talks of recesses and pits and caves and doors and gates, and through these speaks in riddles of becomings and deceases of souls."
A comparatively large number of sources say Pherecydes was the first to teach the eternality and transmigration of human souls. That he was the first to teach such a thing is doubtful, but that he was among the first and that he did profess this teaching is certain. Professor Hermann S. Schibli, the most acclaimed scholar on Pherecydes, concludes that Pherecydes "included in his book ["Pentemychos"] at least a rudimentary treatment of the immortality of the soul, its wanderings in the underworld, and the reasons for the soul’s incarnations".
Astronomy
Aside from his writing, Pherecydes is known for having made a sundial on the island of Syros. The
Science Center & Technology Museum of Thessaloniki website informs us:
His works include:
- A 'heliotropion', or 'shadow-chaser': The first example of this instrument, which was a more advanced kind of gnomon used to determine midday and to calculate the length of the year and the geographical latitude, was built by Pherecydes in Samos.
Pherecydes predicted lunar and solar eclipses.
Influence
Pherecydes' contribution to the early Presocratic thought is (1) the denial of
ex nihiloThe Latin phrase ex nihilo means "out of nothing". It often appears in conjunction with the concept of creation, as in creatio ex nihilo, meaning "creation out of nothing" — chiefly in in philosophical or theological contexts, but also occurs in other fields.In theology, the common phrase creatio...
creation; (2) cosmos self-creation; (3) the eternal nature of the first principles. Both
CiceroMarcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. Cicero is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.Cicero is generally perceived to be one of the most versatile minds of ancient Rome...
and
AugustineAugustine of Hippo , Bishop of Hippo Regius, also known as St. Augustine or St. Austin, was an Algerian Berber philosopher and theologian....
thought that Pherecydes of Syros first taught the immortality of the soul.
Diogenes LaertiusDiogenes Laërtius , was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Nothing is known about his life, but his surviving Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is one of the principal surviving sources for the history of Greek philosophy.-Life:Nothing is known about his life. He must have lived after...
writes that some considered Pherecydes to have been the teacher of
PythagorasPythagoras of Samos was an Ionian Greek philosopher and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. He is often revered as a great mathematician, mystic and scientist; however some have questioned the scope of his contributions to mathematics and natural philosophy...
. He is occasionally counted among the
Seven Sages of GreeceThe Seven Sages or Seven Wise Men was the title given by ancient Greek tradition to seven early 6th century B.C...
.
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