pherecydes of leros (; ;  450s bcg. huxley, in greek, roman and byzantine studies 14 (1973:137â43) places his career in the lifetime of cimon son of miltiades the younger.) was a greek mythographer and logographer. he came from the island of leros. pherecydes spent the greater part of his working life in athens, and so he was also called pherecydes of athens: the encyclopedic byzantine suda consider pherecydes of athens and of leros separately. pherecydes of leros should not be confused with pherecydes of syros, the mid-6th-century philosopher, who was one of the seven sages of greece and was reputed to have been the teacher of pythagoras. == works == pherecydes's great treatisesâa history of his native isle, leros (Î ÎµÏá½¶ ÎÎ­ÏÎ¿Ï); an essay, on iphigeneia (Î ÎµÏá½¶ á¼¸ÏÎ¹Î³ÎµÎ½ÎµÎ¯Î±Ï); and on the festivals of dionysus (Î ÎµÏá½¶ Ïá¿¶Î½ ÎÎ¹Î¿Î½ÏÏÎ¿Ï á¼Î¿ÏÏá¿¶Î½)âare all lost. however, numerous fragments of his ten-book genealogies of the gods and heroes, which was written in the ionian dialect to glorify the ancestors in the heroic age of his 5th-century patrons, have been preserved. pherecydes modified the legends, not in order to rationalize them, but rather to adjust them to popular beliefs. therefore, pherecydes cannot be classed with the earlier mythographer hecataeus of miletus, whose genealogiai ("genealogies") were more skeptical and critical. pherecydes was the main source for the mythological encyclopedia, the bibliotheke mistakenly connected with the name of apollodorus. ==notes==   
5th-century_BC_historians Ancient_Greek_mythographers Early_Greek_historians Historians_from_ancient_Aegean_Sea Metics_in_Classical_Athens