See also Pherecydes of Leros

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 consider Pherecydes of Athens and of Leros...

Pherecydes of Syros (in Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

: Φερεκύδης) was a Greek thinker from the island of Syros

Syros

Syros , or Siros or Syra is a Greek island in the Cyclades, in the Aegean Sea. It is located south-east of Athens. The area of the island is . The largest towns are Ermoupoli, Ano Syros, and Vari. Ermoupoli is the capital of the island and the Cyclades...

, 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 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

Pherecydes' book is in some sources said to have been titled "Pentemychos" ("five recesses") and in some sources said to have been titled "Heptamycho" ("seven recesses"). There seems to be no complete agreement among scholars on which sources to trust regarding the title of Pherecydes' book, the standard survey reference on the Presocratic philosophers, The Presocratic Philosophers by Kirk, Raven and Schofield, opts for "Heptamychos" while the author of the only modern scholarly book devoted entirely to Pherecydes, Hermann S. Schibli, argues that "Pentemychos" was the true title. 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. Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

 in Metaphysics

Metaphysics (Aristotle)

Metaphysics 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 myth

Mythology

The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...

 and philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

.

Creation of the world

In the older cosmogony

Cosmogony

Cosmogony, or cosmogeny, is any scientific theory concerning the coming into existence or origin of the universe, or about how reality came to be. The word comes from the Greek κοσμογονία , from κόσμος "cosmos, the world", and the root of γίνομαι / γέγονα "to be born, come about"...

 of Hesiod

Hesiod

Hesiod was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. His is the first European poetry in which the poet regards himself as a topic, an individual with a distinctive role to play. Ancient authors credited him and...

 (8th-7th century BC) the initial state of the universe is Chaos

Chaos (cosmogony)

Chaos refers to the formless or void state preceding the creation of the universe or cosmos in the Greek creation myths, more specifically the initial "gap" created by the original separation of heaven and earth....

, a dark void considered as a divine primordial condition and the creation is ex nihilo (out of nothing). Pherecydes probably interpreted chaos as water and he does not place it at the very beginning. In his cosmogony there are three divine principles, Zas (Zeus

Zeus

In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus...

), Cthonie (chthonios) and Chronos (time

Time

Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....

) who always existed. The semen (seeds) of Chronos which can probably be considered as a watery chaos was placed in the recesses and composed numerous other offsprings of gods. This is described in a fragment preserved in Damascius'

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 Principis".

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". Hesiod

Hesiod

Hesiod was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. His is the first European poetry in which the poet regards himself as a topic, an individual with a distinctive role to play. Ancient authors credited him and...

 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 the Orphic Eros in function, and as such a personification of masculine, or simply sexual, creativity. Proclus

Proclus

Proclus 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 were to be 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 nihilo

Ex nihilo

Ex nihilo is a Latin phrase meaning "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 philosophical or theological contexts, but also occurs in other fields.In theology, the common phrase creatio ex...

 creation; (2) cosmos self-creation; (3) the eternal nature of the first principles. Both Cicero

Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...

 and Augustine

Augustine of Hippo

Augustine of Hippo , also known as Augustine, St. Augustine, St. Austin, St. Augoustinos, Blessed Augustine, or St. Augustine the Blessed, was Bishop of Hippo Regius . He was a Latin-speaking philosopher and theologian who lived in the Roman Africa Province...

 thought that Pherecydes of Syros first taught the immortality of the soul. Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laertius

Diogenes Laertius 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 definitively known about his life...

 writes that some considered Pherecydes 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...

. He is occasionally counted among 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...

.

External links

• Pherecydes of Syros by Giannis Stamatellos