PHERECYDES, an historian or logographer of the island of Leros, in the Ægean Sea, is satisfactorily proved by Vossius (De Hist. Græcis, p. 444) to be the same who is called an Athenian by some. He flourished B.C. 480, in the reign of Darius Hystaspes, and preceded Herodotus by a few years. He is said to have made a collection of the poems of Orpheus, to have written on the genealogy of the gods (Theogonia) in ten books, on the mythological part of the history of Athens (Ἀντὸχθῶν) in ten books, and moral maxims in hexameter verse. The fragments of Pherecydes, along with those of Acusilaüs, have been published by Sturtz, Gera, 1789, 1798, 1824; also by C. and Th. Müller, in Fragmenta Hist. Græcorum, with a learned dissertation.