Circa 750 B.C. the Greeks developed their own alphabet from the Phoenician. This led to the development of writing beyond a purely administrative use, as had happened in the Mycenaean palaces, where numerous tablets written in Linear B were found detailing transactions, inputs and outputs of products, etc.
In just forty years the new alphabet spread throughout Hellas. Laws could now be written down and posted where everyone could see them. In ceramic pieces such as Nestor's cup we find the first samples of poetry written in Greek. Little by little, the poems transmitted orally for generations, the works of Homer and Hesiod, were written down.
For years the Greeks dedicated themselves to writing down their literature and thoughts. And they did it in the form of poetry. Even the philosophers. Possibly the oral tradition, where rhyme and cadence were used in order to better memorize texts, continued to have a strong influence.
It would take 200 years since the appearance of the Greek alphabet for someone to be so audacious as to write in prose, without metric rhythm or rhyme, in a way that allowed concepts and descriptions of things, places and things to be transmitted much more clearly and directly. events.
The first one we know to have done so was called Pherecides, a philosopher born on the island of Syros in 580 BC. that he was the teacher of none other than Pythagoras (whose maternal uncle he was). Many others would follow, such as his disciple Anaximander, and then practically all later philosophers and historians.
However, none of the writings of Pherecydes have survived to this day, although we know of some (such as the one titled Pentemychos , a kind of cosmogony) due to its mention or citation in other works (even when Aristotle was not very clear that it had existed). The first Greek work written in prose that has come down to us is nothing more and nothing less than the History by Herodotus, completed around 430 BC
Herodotus knew very well that the act of writing in prose was something relatively new, and that is why those who had used this form of writing before him were called logographers .
But going back to Ferécides, tradition tells of him who lived in the caves to the north of the island of Syros (and which can be visited in Ano Meria), and numerous sources (including Cicero and Saint Augustine) say that he was also the first to teach eternity and the transmigration of souls (metempsychosis).
Diogenes Laertius attributes to him abilities to predict events (earthquakes, capture of cities and shipwrecks) and gives several versions of his death, such as that he threw himself from Mount Coricio in Delphi, that he died of illness or eaten by lice, being Pythagoras who buried him Also that:
Diogenes Laertius also tells that, before he died, Pherecides wrote to Thales of Miletus:
It is doubtful that such a letter ever existed, especially since Thales predeceased Pherecydes (approximately 25 years earlier). As for the abilities mentioned above, it is curious that they are also often attributed to Pythagoras, which means that what little we know about Ferécides is shrouded in a halo of legend and confusion.