Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​Pherecydes, son of Babys, of Syros, as Alexander says in the Successions, was a pupil of Pittacus. Theopompus says that he was the first to write on nature and on the gods. Many wondrous stories are told about him. Indeed, while walking along the seashore of Samos and seeing a ship running before a favorable wind, he said that before long it would sink; and it sank before his very eyes. And having drunk water drawn up from a well, he foretold that on the third day there would be an earthquake, and so it happened. And while going up from Olympia to Messene, he advised his guest-friend Perilaus to move away with his household; and Perilaus was not persuaded, but Messene was captured.

​He also told the Lacedaemonians neither to honor gold nor silver, as Theopompus says in his Mirabilia; and he said that Heracles in a dream had commanded him this, and that Heracles on the very same night had ordered the kings to obey Pherecydes. But some attribute these things to Pythagoras. Hermippus says that when a war arose between the Ephesians and the Magnesians, he, wishing the Ephesians to conquer, asked a passerby where he was from, and when the man replied, “From Ephesus,” he said: “Drag me then by the legs and place me in the territory of the Magnesians, and announce to your citizens to bury me there after their victory.” And Pherecydes had given these instructions.

​The man therefore delivered the message. And the Ephesians, attacking on the following day, overpowered the Magnesians, and finding Pherecydes dead, buried him there and honored him magnificently. But some say that having gone to Delphi, he hurled himself down from Mount Corycius. Aristoxenus, however, in his On Pythagoras and His Acquaintances, says that having fallen ill, he was buried by Pythagoras in Delos. But others say that he ended his life infested with lice; and that when Pythagoras arrived and inquired how he was doing, he thrust his finger through the door and said: “Clear by the skin.” From that time on, this phrase has been applied by scholars to a turn for the worse, and those who use it for the best of conditions are mistaken.

​He also used to say that the gods call a dining table a “guardian of sacrifices.” Andron of Ephesus says that there were two men of Syros named Pherecydes: one was the astronomer, and the other was the mythologist, the son of Babys, with whom Pythagoras also studied. But Eratosthenes says there was only one, and that the other was an Athenian genealogist. The book written by the Syrian is preserved, the beginning of which is: “Zas and Chronos were always, and Chthonie; and the name Ge came to be for Chthonie, since Zas gave earth to her as an honor.” His sundial is also preserved on the island of Syros. Duris, in the second book of his Annals, says that this epigram was inscribed upon him:

“The summit of all wisdom was in me; but if there is any more, tell this to my Pythagoras, that he is the first of all throughout the land of Hellas; speaking thus, I do not lie.” Ion of Chios says concerning him: “Thus he, excelling in manly virtue and in reverence, even having perished keeps a joyous life in his soul, if indeed Pythagoras the wise truly knew and thoroughly understood the thoughts of all men.” There is also a poem of our own composed in the Pherecratean meter: “The famous Pherecydes, whom once Syros brought forth,

​is said to have exchanged his former beauty for lice, and to have bidden men to take him straightway to the land of the Magnesians, so that he might give victory to the noble citizens of Ephesus. For there was an oracle, which he alone knew, enjoining this; and he died among those people. So this was after all true: if a man is truly wise, he is a benefit both while living and when he is no more.” He flourished in the fifty-ninth Olympiad. And he wrote the following letter:

“Pherecydes to Thales. May you die well when your destined hour arrives. A disease has seized me after I received the letter from you. I was all teeming with lice and an ague held me. I therefore charged the servants, once they have buried me, to carry the writing to you. And if you, together with the other sages, approve it, then make it public; but if you do not approve it, do not make it public. For it did not yet satisfy me. There is in it no strict accuracy of facts, nor do I promise to know the truth; but whatever a reader of theology might interpret, one must perceive the rest; for I speak all things in riddles. Oppressed more and more by the disease, I admitted neither any of the physicians nor my companions; but to those standing outside the door and asking how I was, putting a finger through the bolt-hole, I would show how I was teeming with the evil. And I told them beforehand to assemble on the next day for the funeral of Pherecydes.” These then are those who were called the Sages, among whom some also reckon Peisistratus the tyrant. But we must now speak of the philosophers; and first we must begin with the Ionian philosophy, which Thales initiated and to which Anaximander was a listener.