However, it survived into the Hellenistic period and a significant amount of its content can be conjectured indirectly through ancient testimonies.

Pherecydes' cosmogony forms a bridge between the mythological thought of Hesiod and pre-Socratic Greek philosophy; Aristotle considered him one of the earliest thinkers to abandon traditional mythology in order to arrive at a systematic explanation of the world, although Plutarch, as well as many other writers, still gave him the title of theologus, as opposed to the later physiologoi of the Ionian school.

Later hellenistic doxographers also considered him as one of the first thinkers to introduce a doctrine of the transmigration of souls to the Ancient Greek religion, which influenced the metempsychosis of Pythagoreanism, and the theogonies of Orphism.

Assuming that Pherecydes was born in this later generation, younger than the philosopher Thales (624-545 BC) and thus an older contemporary of Anaximander, he would also be approximately the correct age for the Pythagorean tradition in which he is regarded as a teacher of Pythagoras.

[5] Other accounts have the philosopher perishing in a battle between the Ephesians and Magnesians, or throwing himself from Mount Corycus in Delphi, or succumbing to typhoid fever.

For example, in his book he describes an important battle in the earliest times between Kronos and Ophion, and this motif occurs in the Middle East.

Pherecydes, along with Anaximander and Anaximenes, has long been regarded as one of the first Greek writers to compose his work in prose rather than hexameter verse.

Although it is lost, it was extant in the Hellenistic period, and the fragments and testimony that survive from works that describe it are enough to reconstruct a basic outline.

The opening sentence is given by Diogenes Laertius,[s] and two fragments in the middle of the text have also been preserved in fragments from a 3rd century Egyptian papyrus discovered by Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt, which was identified thanks to a comment by Clement of Alexandria about the contents of Pherecydes' book: 'Pherecydes of Syros says: "Zas made a great and beautiful robe, and made the earth and Ogenus on it, and the palace of Ogenus".

'[15] Pherecydes developed a unique, syncretistic theogony with a new beginning stage, in which Zas, Chronos, and Chthoniê were the first gods to exist all along.

[17] He wrote that first Chaos came to be (genetos) without explanation, while Zas, Chronos and Chthoniê existed eternally (êsan aeí).

On the third day Zas makes the robe of the world, which he hangs from a winged oak and then presents as a wedding gift to Chthonie, and wraps around her.

[25] The sequence of Pherecydes' cosmogony begins with the eternal gods Zas (Zeus), Chthoniê (Gê) and Chronos (Kronos), who "always existed."

[x] This is opposed to the older cosmogony of Hesiod (8th–7th century BCE) where the initial state of the universe is Chaos, a dark void considered as a divine primordial condition and the creation is ex nihilo (out of nothing).

If there were five niches in the story, they correspond to the five parts ( moirai) of the cosmos: the sea, underworld and heaven (the homeric three-part division), plus the earth and Mount Olympus.

[41] Once Chronos fills them to create the worlds, they turn into the five cosmic regions ("moirai") Uranus ("heaven"), Tartarus, Chaos, Ether/Aer (“sky”) and Nyx (“night”).

This representation is possible, because in a scholium at the Iliad, for example, it says that Chronos smeared two eggs with his seed and gave it to Hera.

[z][47] The marriage of the gods is a union (hieros gamos) where Zas makes a robe (pharos) depicting Gaia and Ogenos.

The stake of the battle is cosmic supremacy and is reminiscent of the Titanomachy and Gigantomachy of traditional theogony, in which the successive conflicts between gods are described with the current world order as a result.

[ae][57] The battle is also etiological, for it explained the myths about ancient sea monsters in both Greece and Asia Minor and the Middle East.

The chaotic forces are eternal and cannot be destroyed; instead they are thrown out from the ordered world and locked away in Tartaros in a kind of "appointment of the spheres", in which the victor (Zeus-Cronus) takes possession of the sky and of space and time.

No surviving fragment makes the connection, but it is possible that the prison-house in Tartaros and the pentemychos are ways of referring to the essentially same thing.

If Pherecydes counted five principal entities in association the pentemychos doctrine, then Ophion, Eurynome, Echidna, Calirrhoe and Chthonie are the main contenders.

Mixture (krasis) plays a role in later cosmologies, such as that of Anaxagoras, Plato (Timaeus) and in the Orphic poem Krater attributed to the Pythagorean philosopher Zopyrus of Tarentum.

[64] Not many prose treatises existed in the 6th century, Pythagoras may have learned of Pherecydes' work and adopted the idea of reincarnation.

A comparatively large number of sources say Pherecydes was the first to teach the Pythagorean doctrine of metempsychosis, the transmigration of human souls.

[am] The Middle Platonist Numenius, like Apponius, referred to the idea that the soul enters the body through the seed, and mentions a river in Pherecydes' representation of the underworld.

Both feature primordial serpents, the weaving of a cosmic robe and eternal Time as god who creates with his own seed by masturbation.

[79] The battle between Kronos and Ophion also influenced the Bibliotheca of pseudo-Apollodorus, who drew on several previous theogonies, such as those of Hesiod and the Orphic religion.

The story was also a source for the Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes, in which Orpheus sings about Ophion and Eurynome who were overthrown by Kronos and Rhea.