Cercops
Pythagorean philosopher, orphic poet
Cercops (Ancient Greek: Κέρκωψ) was a poet to whom Orphic writings were attributed. He was called a Pythagorean by Clement of Alexandria who also states that Epigenes of Alexandria said that he was the author of an Orphic epic poem entitled the "Descent to Hades" and ἱερός λόγος (English "Holy Discourse"), which seem to have been extant in the Alexandrian period. Others attribute the latter work to Prodicus of Samos, or Herodicus of Perinthus, or Orpheus of Camarina. According to Cicero, the Pythagoreans ascribe the Orphic poem to a certain Cercops. According to Aristotle, Cercops could not have been a Pythagorean, as the poet was a contemporary of Hesiod.
Notes
Further reading
Leonid Zhmud (2012). Pythagoras and the Early Pythagoreans. Translated by Kevin Windle and Rosh Ireland. Oxford University Press. pp.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cercops” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.