Influence
Pherecydes' "Pentemychos" was 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 (metampsychosis) of human souls. Both Cicero and Augustine thought of him having given the first teaching of the "immortality of the soul". It is not surprising that some considered Pherecydes to have been the teacher of Pythagoras. 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. Hermann S. Schibli concludes that Pherecydes "included in his book at least a rudimentary treatment of the immortality of the soul, its wanderings in the underworld, and the reasons for the soul’s incarnations".
Pherecydes was occasionally counted among the Seven Sages of Greece. A sun-dial ("helio-tropion"), supposedly made by Pherecydes, was said by Diogenes Laërtius to be "preserved on the island of Syros."
Read more about this topic: Pherecydes Of Syros
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“Perhaps I stand now on the eve of a new life, shall watch the sun rise and disappear behind a black cloud extending out into a grey sky cover. I shall not be deceived by its glory. If it is to be so, there is work and the influence that work brings, but not happiness. Am I strong enough to face that?”
—Beatrice Potter Webb (1858–1943)
“If the dignity as well as the prestige and influence of the United States are not to be wholly sacrificed, we must protect those who, in foreign ports, display the flag or wear the colors of this Government against insult, brutality, and death, inflicted in resentment of the acts of their Government, and not for any fault of their own.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“Constitutional statutes ... which embody the settled public opinion of the people who enacted them and whom they are to govern—can always be enforced. But if they embody only the sentiments of a bare majority, pronounced under the influence of a temporary excitement, they will, if strenuously opposed, always fail of their object; nay, they are likely to injure the cause they are framed to advance.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)