Pherecydes of Leros was a Greek mythographer

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...

 and logographer

Logographer (history)

The logographers were the Greek historiographers and chroniclers before Herodotus, "the father of history". Herodotus himself called his predecessors λογοποιοί...

. He came from the island of Leros

Leros

Leros is a Greek island and municipality in the Dodecanese in the southern Aegean Sea. It lies 317 km from Athens's port of Piraeus, from which it can be reached by an 11-hour ferry ride . Leros is part of the Kalymnos peripheral unit...

. Pherecydes spent the greater part of his working life in Athens

Athens

Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

, and so he was also called Pherecydes of Athens: the encyclopedic Byzantine Suda

Suda

The Suda or Souda is a massive 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Suidas. It is an encyclopedic lexicon, written in Greek, with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often...

consider Pherecydes of Athens and of Leros separately.

Pherecydes of Leros should not be confused with Pherecydes of Syros

Pherecydes of Syros

Pherecydes of Syros was a Greek thinker from the island of Syros, of the 6th century BC. 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...

, the mid-6th century

6th century BC

The 6th century BC started the first day of 600 BC and ended the last day of 501 BC.Pāṇini, in India, composed a grammar for Sanskrit, in this century or slightly later...

 philosopher, who was one of the Seven Sages of Greece

Seven Sages of Greece

The Seven Sages or Seven Wise Men was the title given by ancient Greek tradition to seven early 6th century BC philosophers, statesmen and law-givers who were renowned in the following centuries for their wisdom.-The Seven Sages:Traditionally, each of the seven sages represents an aspect of worldly...

 and was reputed to have been the teacher of Pythagoras

Pythagoras

Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician, and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. Most of the information about Pythagoras was written down centuries after he lived, so very little reliable information is known about him...

.

Works

Pherecydes's great treatises (a history of his native isle, Leros

Leros

Leros is a Greek island and municipality in the Dodecanese in the southern Aegean Sea. It lies 317 km from Athens's port of Piraeus, from which it can be reached by an 11-hour ferry ride . Leros is part of the Kalymnos peripheral unit...

; an essay, On Iphigeneia

Iphigeneia

Iphigenia is a daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra in Greek mythology. In Attic accounts, her name means "strong-born", "born to strength", or "she who causes the birth of strong offspring."-Post-Homeric Greek myth:...

; and On the Festivals of Dionysus

Dionysus

Dionysus was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. His name in Linear B tablets shows he was worshipped from c. 1500—1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks: other traces of Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete...

) are all lost. However, numerous fragments of his ten-book genealogies

Genealogy

Genealogy is the study of families and the tracing of their lineages and history. Genealogists use oral traditions, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kinship and pedigrees of its members...

 of the god

God

God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....

s and hero

Hero

A hero , in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, their cult being one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion...

es, which was written in the Ionian dialect to glorify the ancestors in the heroic age of his 5th century

5th century BC

The 5th century BC started the first day of 500 BC and ended the last day of 401 BC.-Overview:This century saw the beginning of a period of philosophical brilliance among Western civilizations, particularly the Greeks which would continue all the way through the 4th century until the time of...

 patrons, have been preserved. Pherecydes modified the legend

Legend

A legend is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude...

s, not in order to rationalize them, but rather to adjust them to popular belief

Belief

Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true.-Belief, knowledge and epistemology:The terms belief and knowledge are used differently in philosophy....

s. Therefore, Pherecydes cannot be classed with the earlier mythographer Hecataeus of Miletus, whose Genealogiai ("Genealogies") were more skeptical and critical.

Pherecydes was the main source for the mythological encyclopedia, the Bibliotheke

Bibliotheca (Pseudo-Apollodorus)

The Bibliotheca , in three books, provides a comprehensive summary of traditional Greek mythology and heroic legends, "the most valuable mythographical work that has come down from ancient times," Aubrey Diller observed, whose "stultifying purpose" was neatly expressed in the epigram noted by...

mistakenly connected with the name of Apollodorus.