has been attributed all kinds of teachers over time. The confusion among later authors about the attribution of the miracles can perhaps be traced back to the poem of Ion of Chios. Aristotle nevertheless stated in the 4th century BC that both were friends, and the story already about their friendship certainly dates back to the 5th century BC. It is believed that both philosophers once met. Pherecydes' book was thought to have contained a mystical esoteric teaching, treated allegorically. A comparatively large number of sources say Pherecydes was the first to teach the Pythagorean doctrine of metempsychosis, the transmigration of human souls. Both Cicero and Augustine thought of him having given the first teaching of the "immortality of the soul". The Christian Apponius mentioned Pherecydes' belief in metempsychosis in his argument against murder and executions because a good life is rewarded and a bad life is punished in the afterlife. 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. The Neoplatonist Porphyry added 'corners, pits, caves, doors and gates' through which souls travel. Finally, the orator Themistius reported that Pherecydes, like Pythagoras, considered killing a great sin. This suggests that impure deeds in a next life or after death must be expiated. Pherecydes may have regarded the soul as at least an immortal part of the sky or aether. That he was the first to teach such a thing is doubtful, but Schibli concludes that Pherecydes like "included in his book ["Pentemychos"] at least a rudimentary treatment of the immortality of the soul, its wanderings in the underworld, and the reasons for the soul’s incarnations". Similarities with other cosmogonies The theogony of Pherecydes also shows similarities with Orphic theogonies such as the Orphic Hymns. both feature are primordial serpents, the weaving of a cosmic robe and eternal Time as god who creates with his own seed by masturbation. Such Orphic aspects also appear in Epimenides' Theogony. Pherecydes probably influenced the early Orphics, or possibly an earlier sect of Orphic practitioners influenced him. 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