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:
“I think of consciousness as a bottomless lake, whose waters seem transparent, yet into which we can clearly see but a little way. But in this water there are countless objects at different depths; and certain influences will give certain kinds of those objects an upward influence which may be intense enough and continue long enough to bring them into the upper visible layer. After the impulse ceases they commence to sink downwards.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“I became the Incredible Shrinking Mother the year they started junior high. If our relationship today depended on physical clout, I would have about the same influence with them that the republic of Liechtenstein has on world politics.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“Nature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education and refinement of her children. Consider the silent influence which flowers exert, no less upon the ditcher in the meadow than the lady in the bower. When I walk in the woods, I am reminded that a wise purveyor has been there before me; my most delicate experience is typified there.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)