Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898)

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Pherecȳdes

（Φερεκύδης).

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1.

A Greek philosopher, of the isle of Syros, about B.C. 600-550; said to have been the first writer of prose. He wrote in the Ionic dialect of the origin of the world and the gods (Cosmogonia and Theogonia). The poetic element seems to have held a predominant place in his prose. He is also said to have been the first to maintain the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, which his pupil Pythagoras borrowed from him.

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2.

One of the best known of the Greek logographi (q.v.), and a contemporary of Hellanicus and Herodotus. His chief work was a mythological history in ten books, beginning with the genealogy of the gods, and passing on to an account of the Heroic Age and of the origins of the great families of his own time. Fragments edited by Sturz (Leipzig, 1824), and Müller (Paris, 1850).