Pherecydes of Leros (c. 450s BC) 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 separately.
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.
Works
Pherecydes's great treatises (a history of his native 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 earlier mythographer
Hecataeus of Miletus, whose
Genealogiai ("Genealogies") were more skeptical and critical.
Pherecydes was the main source for the mythological encyclopedia, the Bibliotheke mistakenly connected with the name of Apollodorus.
Notes
Category:People from the Dodecanese
Category:Early Greek historians
Category:Metics in Classical Athens
Category:5th-century BC historians
Category:Ancient Greek mythographers
Category:Historians from ancient Aegean Sea
Category:Year of birth unknown
Category:Year of death unknown
