says. But Mysonianus, in his Coincidences, says, that the Cretans call him one of the Curetes. And the Lacedæmonians preserve his body among them, in obedience to some oracle, as Sosibius the Lacedæmonian says.
XIII. There were also two other Epimenides, one the genealogist; the other, the man who wrote a history of Rhodes in the Doric dialect.
# LIFE OF PHERECYDES.
I. Pherecydes was a Syrian, the son of Babys, and, as Alexander says, in his Successions, he had been a pupil of Pittacus.
II. Theopompus says that he was the first person who ever wrote among the Greeks on the subject of Natural Philosophy and the Gods. And there are many marvellous stories told of him. For it is said that he was walking along the sea-shore at Samos, and that seeing a ship sailing by with a fair wind, he said that it would soon sink; and presently it sank before their eyes. At another time he was drinking some water which had been drawn up out of a well, and he foretold that within three days there would be an earthquake; and there was one. And as he was going up to Olympia, and had arrived at Messene, he advised his entertainer, Perilaus, to migrate from the city with all his family, but that Perilaus would not be guided by him; and afterwards Messene was taken.
III. And he is said to have told the Lacedæmonians to honour neither gold nor silver, as Theopompus says in his Marvels; and it is reported that Hercules laid this injunction on him in a dream, and that the same night he appeared also to the kings of Sparta, and enjoined them to be guided by Pherecydes; but some attribute these stories to Pythagoras.
IV. And Hermippus relates that when there was a war between the Ephesians and Magnesians, he, wishing the Ephesians to conquer, asked some one, who was passing by, from whence he came? and when